THE  LIFE  OF  EMERSON 


SNIDER 


1. 

EMERSON    JUNIOR. 

Day,  thou  hast  two  faces, 
Making  one  place  two  places! 
O,  Sun!  I  curse  thy  cruel  ray: 
Back,  back,  to  Chaos,  harlot  day: 
"Complaint.' 

2. 
EMERSON  SENIOR. 

An  Energy  that  searches  thorough 

From  Chaos  till  the  da-wing  morrow 

Into  all  our  human  plight, 

The  soul's  pilgrimage  and  flight; 

In  city  or  in  solitude, 

Step  by  step,  lifts.  Bad  to  Good. 

"May-Day.' 


A     BIOGRAPHY 
OF 

RALPH    WALDO   EMERSON 

SET   FORTH    AS   HIS  LIFE   ESSAY 


DENTON     J.    SNIDER 
It' 


M  DCCC  CXX  I 

THE   WILLIAM     HARVEY     M  I  N  E.  R    CO ..    INC 
SAINT     LOUIS 


Copyright  1921  by 
DENTON   J.    SNIDER 

All  right*  reserved,  including  that  ot 
translation  into  foreign  languages  in 
cluding  the  Scandinavian 


Dedicated  to 

FRANK    B    SANBORN 

of  Concord 

in  memory  of  his  many  kindnesses 


470019 


CONTENTS 

Introduction  5 

Part  First    (Emerson's  Apprenticeship) 19 

Chap.  I.     Traditional  Schooling 26 

I.    Ancestry  29 

II.    The  Parental  Home 34 

III.  Mary  Moody  Emerson ! 37 

IV.  Emerson  at  College .....'. 45 

V.    The  Schoolmaster  Emerson 50 

VI.    The  Itinerant  Emerson 57 

Chap.  II.     The  Explosion 65 

I.    Pastor   Emerson 68 

II.    Marriage  73 

III.  The  Breaking  Point 78 

IV.  What  Next : 84 

Chap.  III.     The  Recovery 89 

I.    Health  Recovered  '. 91 

II.    Back  Through  the  Antique 95 

III.  Back  Through  the  Modern 104 

IV.  Emerson  and  Carlyle Ill 

V.    The   Visit 115 

VI.    Home  Again 121 

VII.    Retrospect  ,..,.127 


CONTENTS 

Part  Second  (The  Revolutionary  Emerson) 134 

Chap.  IV.     The  Creative  Decennium 145 

Sect.  A.     Productivity 151 

I.  Transcendentalism ...152 

II.  Transcendental  Nature 168 

III.  Transcendental  Men 172 

IV.  The  Transcendental  Masterpiece 188 

V.    The  Transcendental  Crisis 202 

VI.    Aftermath  of  Essays 215 

VII.    The  Dawning  Reaction 223 

VIII.    Summary 236 

Sect.  B.     Propagation 240 

I.    The  Transcendental  Circle 244 

II.    The  Transcendental  Academy 251 

III.    The  Transcendental  Magazine 258 

IV:    The  Transcendental  Community 265 

Sect.  C.     Origination 272 

I.    Emerson 's  Journals 276 

II.    Emerson 's  Correspondence 286 

III.    Emerson's  Poetry  294 

Retr o  s  pect 299 

Chap.  V.     Reactionary  Decennium 303 

I.    Representative  Men 323 

II.  The  Representative  Woman 331 

III.  The  Representative  Nation 334 

IV.  The  Representative  American 338 

Chap.  VI.     The  Practical  Decennium : 344 

I.    The  Regressive  Emerson . 360 

II.    The  Progressive  Emerson 262 

III.    The  Institutional  Emerson 367 

Part  Third   (The  Reconciled  Emerson) „ .374 


Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 

INTRODUCTION. 

Emerson 's  total  round  of  years  does  not  quite  run 
up  to  four  score  (1803-1882).  A  superficial  view 
will  trace  in  it  many  turns,  tortuosities,  even  shrill 
ing  contradictions ;  so  the  first  biographic  problem 
emerges :  how  is  this  involved  refractory  mass  to 
be  set  forth  in  some  kind  of  transparent  order,  and 
its  chaotic  dispersion  unified?  A  mere  chronologic 
record  of  successive  events  in  human  life  is  not 
light-bringing,  even  if  needful  as  the  prime  mate 
rial  foundation.  Some  way  or  other  we  must  be 
led  to  see  and  to  express  the  man's  ultimate  proc 
ess  as  revealed  in  his  character  and  stamped  upon 
the  whole  of  it  and  the  parts.  A  very  intricate 
piece  of  humanity  is  our  Emerson,  labyrinthine, 
and  somewhat  gnarled  in  spots  perchance;  but 
when  seen  and  felt  in  the  entirety  of  his  existence, 
he  integrates  all  its  recalcitrant  fragments,  and 
attunes  to  one  key-note  its  varied  discords.  His 
wholeness  makes  him  whole  in  all  his  seeming  de 
flections  and  his  differences.  Can  a  biography 
show  this  his  order  in  its  order? 


£  RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 

Several  lives  of  Emerson  have  appeared  along 
the  line  of  years  since  his  passing;  as  we  write  to 
day  the  last  account  of  him  is  hardly  a  year  old. 
A  valuation  of  these  works  lies  not  in  our  purview ; 
but  we  may  make  the  general  and  colorless  remark 
that  they  all  have  their  special  excellences  in  ar 
ranging  their  details  after  the  ordinary  way  of 
biographical  composition.  But  our  purpose  is  to 
emphasize  the  process  of  the  man's  total  achieve 
ment,  and  still  further  to  behold  in  the  one  biog 
raphy  the  inner  movement  of  all  biography.  Such 
a  process  must  be  at  last  psychical,  and  thereby 
reveal  the  ultimate  fact  of  human  existence.  The 
life  of  the  one  person,  especially  if  he  be  repre 
sentative,  is  to  be  shown  bearing  the  impress  of 
supreme  personality.  To  use  an  Emersonian  con 
ception,  man 's  biography  is  an  efflux  of  God 's  biog 
raphy;  the  finite  Self,  in  its  most  intimate  unitary 
act  as  well  as  in  its  diversified  individual  career 
must  'be  seen  reflecting  the  image  of  the  universal 
Self-.  The  events,  doctrines,  deeds  of  a  man's  life 
are  a  chaos  till  the  biographer  voicing  the  Supreme 
Orderer,  turns  them  into,  a  cosmos. 

Accordingly,  the  first  task  of  the  life-writer  is 
to  catch  the  primordial  stages  of  this  highest  activ 
ity,  which  thereby  becomes  creative  of  his  theme, 
and  clothes  itself  in  the  special  details  of  a  human 
career.  That  is,  we  seek  at  the  start  to  mark  the 
great  sweeps,  the  pivotal  turns,  the  grand  crises  of 
a  life,  which  we  shall  here  call  its  Periods.  Tn  other 
words,  our  first  attempt  is  to  periodize  Emerson. 


INTRODUCTION.  7 

These  larger  arcs  of  his  biographical  cycle  are, 
therefore,  the  beginning,  middle,  and  end  of  our 
book,  revealing  the  basic  organization  and  mean 
ing  of  his  completed  achievement. 

Let  it  be  emphasized,  then,  that  the  most  deeply 
significant  node  of  Emerson's  career  hovers  about 
the  years  1834-5  when  he  was  passing  through  his 
thirty-second  year.  After  a  good  deal  of  drifting, 
both  inner  and  outer,  he  finally  established  his 
home  at  Concord,  home  spiritual  as  well  as  do 
mestic.  He  had  won  his  fundamental  conception, 
he  had  thought  out  his  world-view,  and  was  ready, 
yea  eager  to  set  it  down  in  writing  and  to  promul 
gate  it  to  the  time  despite  all  neglect  and  calumny. 
He  was  assured  of  his  economic  independence,  the 
primal  postulate  of  the  other  kinds  of  indepen 
dence.  He  had  both  the  leisure  and  the  solitude  to 
yield  himself  freely  to  the  immediate  impress  of 
nature  and  deity,  and  to  report  the  same  as  the 
true  content  of  his  life's  work.  In  his  own  house 
at  Concord,  where  he  settled,  he  had  taken  a  lofty 
position,  from  which  he  could  swoop  down  upon  the 
outlying  earth,  and  especially  upon  adjacent  unre- 
ceptive  Boston,  capital  of  Philistia,  as  we  may  in 
fer  from  repeated  allusions  as  well  as  assaults. 
Then  he  would  return  to  his  isolated  perch  for 
fresh  meditation  and  writing.  His  abode  becomes 
for  him  a  Castle  of  Defiance,  also  a  Fortress  of  Lib 
erty,  quite  impregnable  by  any  sort  of  hostile  gun 
nery  or  hunger. 

Thus  we  set  down  the  chief  landmark  in  Emer- 


8  RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 

son's  biography,  the  transition  of  the  young  man 
info  his  middle  life,  into  the  time  of  his  originality 
and  main  achievement — his  Second  Period,  as  w<3 
shall  name  it,  embracing  quite  three  decades  of  his 
activity.  Antecedent  to  this  landmark  and  leading 
up  to  it  rise  Emerson's  years  of  education  at  home 
and  at  college,  his  training  to  his  transmitted  voca 
tion  till  his  falling  out  with  it  and  flight  abroad. 
In  general,  this  stage  stresses  his  appropriation  of 
the  traditional  Past,  against  which,  however,  there 
runs  in  him  an  ever-increasing  protest  all  the  way 
up  to  downright  revolt.  At  the  same  time  through 
this  negative  schooling  he  is  slowly  evolving  into 
his  positive  world-view  or  ultimate  Idea,  which  he 
is  to  proclaim  to  the  ages  from  his  perch  of  lofty 
independence  on  his  Castle  of  Defiance. 

There  remains  the  final  or  Third  Period  of  Emer 
son's  life  which  he  himself  has  indicated  decisively 
in  his  poem  named  Terminus.  Under  this  title  the 
God  of  Metes  and  Bounds  appears  to  him,  com 
manding  "No  more!  No  farther  shoot  thy  ambi 
tious  branches  and  root."  This  was  read  to  his 
son  in  1866;  already  the  poet  had  felt  he  had 
reached  the  last  great  turn  of  his  career  and  cried 
out 

lit  is  time  to  be  old, 
To  take  in  sail. 
Economize  the  failing  river, 
Mature  the  unfallen  fruit- 

In  such  words  Emerson  takes  a  survey  of  his 


INTRODUCTION.  9 

time  of  life  and  declares  what  in  general  he  is 
henceforth  to  perform  during  his  remaining  days. 
He  states  the  character  and  content  of  his  Third 
Period,  or  that  of  his  old-age,  as  distinct  from  his 
middle  or  Second  Period.  Ho  is  to  go  back  and 
gather  up  what  of  his.  harvest  still  lies  scattered. 
The  time  of  creative  power  is  past:  "Fancy  de 
parts,  no  more  invent. ' '  Let  there  now  be  a  return 
upon  my  former  self,  an  era  of  collection  and  recol 
lection,  such  as  befits  the  graying  hair  of  the  sage. 

Thus  we  glimpse  the  complete  round  of  Emer 
son's  youth,  manhood,  and  age,  the  compartments 
of  his  life-cycle,  with  their  corresponding  pivotal 
activities.  Remember  that  it  is  the  man  himself 
looking  backward  and  feeling  deeply  the  turning 
nodes  of  his  spirit,  who  thus  draws  his  own  life 
lines  and  marks  his  Periods.  Herein  we  may  well 
hear  him  giving  a  hint  for  his  futtfre  biography. 
Moreover  these  three  stages  are  to  be  seen  finally  as 
one  process  of  Emerson's  soul  imprinted  on  his 
total  achievement.  Thus  we  may  take  up  his  last 
meaning  into  our  own  existence,  which  in  its  spe 
cial  way  is  passing  through  the  same  spiritual 
stages — we  too  are  to  have  our  measured  and  ful 
filled  allotment  of  days  and  their  works. 

And  now  before  advancing  to  details,  we  shall 
seek  to  forecast  in  some  general  terms  the  pith  of 
Emerson's  total  accomplishment,  up  rearing  a  kind 
of  beacon  to  illumine  our  road  to  the  end.  Unto 
what  did  he  aspire,  and  how  much  did  he  fulfill? 
If  we  catch  the  somewhat  hidden  but  most  intense 


10  RALPH   WALDO   EMERSON. 

and  persistent  throb  passing  through  all  of  Emer 
son's  works,  we  cannot  help  feeling  that  the  deep 
est,  strongest,  indestructible  aspiration  of  his  heart 
is  to  be  poet,  yea  just  the  American  poet,  the  singer 
of  the  new-born  Occident,  the  bard  of  a  rising 
world,  which  he  glimpsed  here  in  the  seething  West. 
In  his  most  intimate  confessions  which  we  hear  in 
an  undertone  through  his  earlier  Journals  and 
Poems,  he  breathes  forth  his  hopes,  doubts,  and  de 
spairs.  And  when  in  his  Essays  he  turns  to  tell  of 
the  high  function  of  the  poet  and  of  poetry,  to 
which  he  is  often  inclined  to  make  a  digression,  he 
swells  with  an  uplift  and  exuberance,  which  be 
speak  his  keenest  personal  interest.  As  Homer 
was  the  herald  intoning  the  outset  of  the  Euro 
pean  tide  of  the  World's  History,  so  Emerson 
longed  to  be  the  voice  singing  the  advent  of  a  new 
order  and  its 'aeon  on  this  side  of  the  globe. 

But  this  his  supreme  aspiration  was  destined 
not  to  be  fulfilled,  though  we  hearken  sweet  echoes 
of  it  tingling  in  shreds  of  music  all  along  his  life's 
meandering  journey.  Emerson  was  not  architec 
tonic  in  verse  or  in  prose ;  many  beautifully  carved 
marbles  were  his,  but  somehow  he  never  could  build 
them  into  a  temple.  Herein  his  God  of  Metes  and 
Bounds  put  upon  him  an  impassable  limit  which 
diverted  the  flow  of  Genius  into  another  channel 
whose  manifold  tortuosities  are  to  be  traced  and 
mapped  in  this  life-essay  of  his,  outlining  the  man 
realized. 

And  yet  the  poetic  fountain  in  Emerson's  soul 


INTRODUCTION.  H 

was  perennial,  ever  jetting  its  rainbowed  .spray  in 
the  /sunshine  of  his  days  till  their  close,  and  token 
ing  the  many -h  ued  moods  of  his  spirit's  wrestling1 
in  defeat  and  triumph.  His  poems  are  his  most  inti 
mate  commentary  on  himself;  to  us  their  chief 
worth  is  that  they  show  Emerson  at  his  confes 
sional. 

Undoubtedly  this  lofty  poetic  ambition  was  Em 
erson's  profoundest  response  to  his  time  and  to  his 
people.  Such  a  strong-  spiritual  aspiration  of  the 
Western  Continent  for  a  universal  singer  lay  deep 
not  only  in  him  but  in  the  New  "World,  and  espe 
cially  in  what  may  be  deemed  its  most  advanced 
part  at  that  time,  New  England.  The  hidden  push 
of  the  Time-spirit  is  what  produced  the  brilliant 
outbursts  of  poetic  melodies,  which  during  the  mid 
dle  of  the  nineteenth  century  seemed  to  hover 
around  Boston.  It  is  true  that  this  literary  output 
was  dispersed  both  in  its  creation  and  its  creators ; 
it  could  not  concentrate  itself  into  one  overtower- 
ing  personality,  or  into  a  single  great  world-poem. 
It  never  brought  forth  one  of  Time's  eternally  sing 
ing  Bibles,  of  which  Europe  acclaims  at  least  four. 
Still  that  scattered  body  of  song  both  in  its  parts 
and  as  a  whole  is  the  best  poetic  utterance  we  Amer 
icans  have  had :  so  let  not  gratitude  be  stinted. 

Here  we  may  digress  to  note  that  Emerson  has 
still  another  ambition  of  great  authorship  which 
streams  through  his  whole  life  as  a  kind  of  ever- 
present  undercurrent,  and  which  often  bubbles  up 
suddenlv  to  the  surface,  esneeiallv  in  the  secret  self- 


12  IfALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 

comnmiiings  of,  his  Journal.  Tie  strove  all  his 
days  at  intervals  to  write  out  his  Prima  Philoso- 
phia/a  philosophic  scheme  of  the  Universe.  But 
this  plan  never  came  to  fruition,  for  the  same 
general  reason  that  his  poetic  plan  failed  of  ful 
fillment.  He  lacked  the  structural  gift;  he  could 
gather  and  trim  to  beauty  the  separate  native 
materials,  but  could  never  erect  their  edifice.  So 
he  became  a  great  philosopher  who  never  organ 
ized  his  philosophy,  as  he  is  a  great  poet  without 
any  complete  poetic  structure.  How  shall  we 
designate  him?  The  poet-philosopher  he  has 
been  baptized,  unique  of  kind  and  original  in 
speech  and  spirit — at  his  highest  only  like  unto 
himself. 

So  we  have  to  confine  his  genius  to  being 
the  seer,  not  the  systematizer,  discursively  in 
tuitional,  not  massively  architectonic.  His  inborn 
aloofness  has  often  been  noted  and  censured;  he 
was  aware  of  it  and  made  many  a  good  resolu 
tion  to  overcome  it ;  but  he  could  not  in  nature 
associate  either  his  thoughts  or  himself.  Hence 
his  literary  as  well  as  social  manner,  both  of 
which  he  aspired  to  transcend.  Greatest  native 
glimpser  of  the  eternal  verities,  but  the  least 
organizer  thereof — he  has  often  called  up  the 
question  which  is  the  best  way  of  their  imparta- 
tion.  Each  way  has  its  fervent  discipleship,  but 
both  belong  to  the  complete  expression.  Do  not 
disparage  the  unitary  philosopher  Hegel  because 
you  lik?  the  sentential  philosopher  Emerson,  as  the 


INTRODUCTION.  13 

latter  sometimes  unfortunately  did ;  in  the  last 
synthesis  both  belong  together,  each  is  a  side 
or  a  half  of  a  greater  whole  than  either  by  him 
self,  which  whole  is  or  ought  to  be  yours  or  in 
deed  you.  Far-outstretching  suggestions,  intima 
tions,  prophecies  are  sown  all  over  the  Emerson 
ian  seedfield ;  but  the  crop  belongs  to  the  future. 
"Who  will  see  it  mature  and  gather  it?  Such  is 
the  splendid  gift  of  our  author,  enduringly  crea 
tive  ;  but  such  are  also  his  confining  limits, 
against  which  we  behold  him  chafing  and  break 
ing  till  we  read  his  life's  postscript. 

If  then  this  supreme  national,  we  might  say 
continental  aspiration  for  a  worthy  utterance  in 
poetry  and  philosophy  was  not  fulfilled  by  Emer 
son,  despite  his  intense  longing  and  labor,  and 
not  by  any  other  of  our  metering  and  metaphy 
sical  artificers,  nor  by  all  of  them  together,  what 
then  is  his  positive  accomplishment  in  its  essence  ? 
Can  we  turn  our  eye  upon  the  very  marrow  of 
his  achievement?  We  soon  are  brought  not  only 
to  feel  but  to  see  that  Emerson  lived  an  all  per 
vasive  unity  both  of  thought  and  purpose — a 
unity  which  he  reproduces  and  reiterates  hun 
dredfold  through  every  phasis  of  his  career:  the 
immediate  efflux  of  the  deity  into  the  soul  of 
man,  which  it  imbreathes  with  its  one  God-sent 
spirit,  endowing  the  same  with  a  vast  creative 
multiformity.  Emerson  would  withdraw  from 
the  world  of  action  and  its  struggles  to  his  lonely 
perch  in  his  Concord  abode,  which  was  his 


14  RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 

Hermitage  of  Solitude  as  well  as  his  Castle  of 
Defiance.  There  he  would  watch  and  nourish 
the  descent  of  the  God  into  himself,  carefully 
noting  in  words  the  direct  inspirations  from 
above.  Then  he  would  sheave  and  shock  the 
choicest  spears  of  his  supernal  harvest  into  some 
form  of  the  Essay  as  his  supreme  utterance. 

So  Ve  conceive  Emerson,  when  he  had  gath 
ered  his  divine  crop  of  inspirations  and  wrought 
them  into  a  shape  which  could  be  handled  and 
imparted,  to  have  descended  into  the  world,  and 
especially  into  Boston,  somewhat  as  the  Upper 
Power  had  descended  into  him  with  its  sacred 
evangel.  For  to  his  mind  Boston  remained  till 
the  close  of  his  days  the  chief  looming  fortress 
to  be  captured,  the  grand  citadel  of  the  hosts  of 
the  deniers  who  had  first  cast  him  off,  and  then 
had  harried  and  outraged  him,  upbraiding  his 
new  Heaven-inspired  message  with  a  haughty 
malediction.  Especially  its  learned  University 
put  him  under  ban,  his  Alma  Mater  thrust  from 
her  spiritual  embrace  for  nearly  a  generation  her 
greatest  son.  With  time  however  there  came 
about  an  approach  from  both  sides,  ending  in  a 
mutual  reconciliation  and  acceptance — one  of  the 
healings  of  his  remedial  old-age,  or  Third  Period. 

Accordingly  the  genetic  pulse-beat  of  Emer 
son's  career  is  religious,  and  throbs  itself  out 
into  two  main  lines:  a  militant  negative  strand, 
and  an  affirmative  doctrinal  principle.  He  as 
sailed  all  forms,  dogmas,  institutions,  which  lay 


INTRODUCTION.  15 

between  the  soul  universal  (sometimes  called  by 
Mm  the  Oversoul)  and  the  soul  particular  and 
human.  A  dislike  he  showed  for  any  mediating 
influence,  even  for  the  Mediator  himself,  but 
laid  all  stress  upon  the  immediate,  spontaneous, 
inspirational  activity.  Such,  then,  is  the  unit  of 
his  thought,  the  central  sun  of  his  spirit,  out  of 
which  radiate  his  chief  distinctive  writings.  He 
would  bring  us  back  to  man's  original,  intui 
tional,  unobstructed  communion  with  the  divine 
fountain-head.  The  variations  upon  this  theme 
wind  through  his  entire  career  and  mark  the 
stages  of  its  development.  And  let  it  be  added 
that  such  a  message  was  most  needful  for  his 
time  and  people,  and  it  is  by  no  means  yet  super 
annuated. 

At  this  point,  then,  it  is  in  place  to  restate 
somewhat  more  explicitly  the  three  salient  Peri 
ods  of  Emerson's  Biography — putting  stress 
upon  the  Emersonian  unit  of  thought  as  it  un 
folds  through  these  different  phases. 

The  First  Period  is  his  young  manhood,  during 
which  the  religious  chiefly,  but  also  in  part  the 
secular,  tradition  of  his  time  is  appropriated  and 
accepted,  yet  with  an  ever-increasing  protest  and 
reaction  against  it  till  he  breaks  with  it  and  as 
serts  his  independence  of  form  while  affirming 
the  spirit.  This  wre  call  the  Apprenticeship  of 
Emerson. 

The  Second  Period  is  his  middle-age  when  he 
becomes  anti-traditional  in  religion  with  a  strong 


16  RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 

polemic  tendency,  and  is  borne  forward  to  an 
tagonism  against  all  institutional  forms — polit 
ical,  social,  economic,  even  domestic.  Thus  he 
universalizes  his  negative  attitude  to  the  relig 
ious  institution ;  but  he  emphasizes  still  the  posi 
tive  side  of  his  doctrine — inspiration,  spontane 
ity,  the  immediate  God.  This  is  the  time  of  his 
productive  Genius,  crowning  him  with  his  perma 
nent  literary  worth  and  imparting  his  remedial 
power — the  tonic  Emerson,'  whose  grand  stimu 
lating  energy  now  lies  in  his  anti-traditional 
spirit. 

The  Third.  Period  is  old-age  (somewhat  early 
with  Emerson)  during  which  he  shows  signs  of 
reconciliation  with  tradition  and  its  established 
institutions,  even  if  this  new  harmony  of  his  be 
not  complete.  Still  he  comes  to  think  that  the 
transmitted  form,  especially  that  of  the  State, 
may  be  the  conduit  of  the  down-flowing  God,  as 
well  as  the  individual.  But  his  creativity  is  at 
an  end,  he  becomes  largely  a  return  upon  his 
once  productive  self,  a  reminiscence  of  his  former 
originality.  So  we  may  call  him  the  reconciled 
Emerson,  as  he  rounds  out  his  life's  drama. 

Such  we  prefigure  to  be  the  evolutionary 
sweep  of  Emerson's  innermost  life-unit  in  its 
triple  round,  the  soul  cf  his  soul  in  its  ultimate 
form  and  fulfillment.  It  is  getting  to  be  gener 
ally  conceded  that  Emerson  is  our  greatest 
scribe,  our  literary  Great  Man,  who  as  his  dis 
tinctive  vocation  wrought  the  v/ritten  word  ere- 


INTRODUCTION.  17 

atively,  in  truth  our  supreme  Occidental  pen-- 
wielder.  As  such  he  is  not  only  a  worthy,  but  a 
necessary  object  of  study. 

Emerson  has  often  been  designated  not  in 
aptly  as  the  modern  or  American  seer.  He  isj  in 
accord  with  his  deepest  spiritual  attribute,  a 
prophet ;  and  his  prophecy  at  last  turns  back 
upon  himself,  and  prophesies  just  him,  becoming 
thus  autobiographic  at  the  very  source  of  his 
Genius.  Plainly  the  prophetic  limit  is  drawn 
upon  him,  and  he  remains  a  forecast  rather  than 
a  fulfillment.  In  his  highest  vision  he  scatters 
intimations  of  something  beyond  him,  of  a  con 
summation  greater  than  he  is.  The  oracle  he 
proclaims,  not  the  performance ;  hence  he  is  nec 
essarily  somewhat  «^matic,  especially  to  those 
who  do  not  know  beforehand  what  he  means. 
Not  without  a  subtle  self-foretelling  did  he  poet 
ize  the  Egyptian  Sphinx,  and  place  his  riddle- 
some  poem  as  the  prelude  to  his  first  book  of 
verse.  Modern  editors  have  removed  the  Orien 
tal  mojister,  half  man,  half  beast,  from  the  door 
way  of  his  temple  of  song,  and  tucked  it  off 
^emewhere  to  one  side.  Still  it  is  there  in  front, 
/*  and  will  not  "away ;  not  removable  by  a  mere 
translocation. 

Often  we  shall  seek  to  raise  to  the  light  this 
dark  subterranean  treasure  of  presage  and  pre 
sentiment  in  Emerson,  and  even  to  suggest  at 
times  some  outline  or  perchance  order  of  what 
his  dispersed  vision  is  trying  to  foreshow.  He 


18  RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 

frequently  hints  that  he  is  more  prescience  than 
science,  more  anticipation  than  realization,  more 
the  precursor  than  the  accomplisher,  more  har 
binger  than  harvester— in  fine  a  John  the  Bap 
tist,  whom  who  is  to  come  after? 

Into  one  kind  or  form  of  writ  he  evolves  at 
his  culmination,  the  Essay,  which  is  not  merely 
Emersonian  but  Emerson,  yea  the  sublimated, 
quintessential  Emerson,  distilled  and  concen 
trated  from  the  less  ripened  or  more  diluted 
drops  trickling  from  the  writer's  brain-pan 
along  a  line  of  many  years.  The  Essay  grew  to 
be  the  most  intimate  and  purest  expression  of 
Emerson's  soul-world,  acclaiming  the  supreme 
marriage  of  his  Poetry  and  Philosophy  in  one 
happy  household. 

Emerson  is,  accordingly,  in  his  spiritual  sov 
ereignty  the  Essayist;  indeed  we  might  call  him 
as  a  whole  the  Essay,  which  thus  rises  the  all- 
irradiating  luminary  over  his  entire  Biography. 
So  it  comes  that  we  have  given  to  our  book  the 
name  of  Essay,  after  Emerson's  cardinal  work 
and  excellence,  which  name  may  also  hint  his 
discursive  and  even  his  prophetic  character,  as 
he  foreshortens  in  quick  sketchy  'dashes  things 
yet  to  be  consummated.  Moreover  this  attempt 
of  ours  seeks  to  embrace  his  whole  career  from 
start  to  finish,  hence  the  added  title  Emerson's 
Life-Essay. 


Emerson's  Apprenticeship. 

(1803-1835.) 

Apprenticeship  we  designate  the  First  Period 
of  Emerson,  whose  function  is  now  to  get  ac 
quainted  with  the  prescribed  world  into  which  he 
was  born,  and  with  which  he  is  to  build  the  fore 
court  of  his  life's  temple.  Apprenticed  he  now  is 
to  acquire  the  transmitted  means  of  the  culture 
of  his  time ;  he  has  to  be  reared  and  educated 
after  the  pattern  handed  down,  and  to  be  trained 
to  an  ancestral  vocation ;  thus  the  present  Period 
is  essentially  his  Apprenticeship  to  Tradition.  He 
must  at  first  get  hold  of  the  educative  instrumen 
talities  of  his  own  and  his  age's  evolution,  in  or 
der  to  transcend  them  and  to  rise  into  his  unique 
individual  fulfillment. 

Somewhere  about  thirty-two  years  does  this 
preliminary  task  occupy  him,  from  his  birth  till 

19 


20         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  FIRST. 

his  second  marriage,  and  settlement  at  Concord. 
Manifestly  this  is  a  time  of  outer  preparation  and 
inner  discipline  for  his  supreme  work,  which  is 
to  follow.  Moreover  he  wins  through  this  expe 
rience  his  distinctive  world-view  which  he  will 
afterwards  apply  to  many  subjects.  It  is  also  a 
movement  from  dependence  on  the  past  to  inde 
pendence  in  thought  and  conduct ;  from  prescrip 
tive  observance  he  slowly  stiffens  to  individual 
•self-reliance,  his  favorite  category.  In  general  he 
unfolds  from  an  outer  commanded  soul  to  an  in 
ner  liberated  spirit,  and  starts  to  express  this 
new-won  liberty  both  in  its  positive  and  negative 
aspect.  And  let  us  not  forget — for  he  never  for 
got  it — that  God-sent  gift  of  economic  liber ty, 
that  primal  enfranchisement  from  life's  first 
needs,  the  free  gift  of  freedom's  very  condition, 
which  he  received  gratis  at  the  close  of  his  Ap 
prenticeship.  A  reward  of  the  past  we  may  value 
it,  and  still  more  an  earnest  of  the  future. 

We  are,  however,  to  note  with  due  care  that 
Avhile  he  is  traveling  through  this  realm  of  pre 
scription,  there  runs  alongside  it  or  rather  under 
neath  it  an  ever-increasing  stream  of  protest  and 
of  denial  quite  parallel.  Still  this  opposition  is 
never  boisterous,  but  rather  secretive,  at  least  in 
its  earlier  stages ;  such  dissent  seems  a  steady 
quiet  growth  of  an  original  seed-corn,  till  it  finally 
bursts  its  bud  into  the  full  flower.  A  deeply 
negative  germ  lurks  in  Emerson  quite  from  the 
beginning ;  he  was  a  born  skeptic  in  certain  di- 


EMERSON'S  APPRENTICESHIP.  21 

rections,  hence  his  youthful  love  of  Montaigne, 
who  fed  an  inner  native  hunger.  The  challenger 
of  the  inherited  beliefs  must  not  be  left  out  of 
his  boyhood.  Still  Emerson  never  gets  to  be  a 
fire-breathing  world-stormer  in  frantic  revolt, 
never  a  human  volcano  in  his  destructive  erup 
tion  against  the  established  order,  never  a  mad 
dened  Byron,  never  a  youthful  Goethe  or  Marlow 
in  mighty  upheaval. 

It  is  a  peculiar  trait  of  Emerson  that  he  leaves 
the  impression  of  classic  placidity  on  the  surface, 
even  of  a  restful  imperturbability  when  his  agi 
tation  is  most  furious  underneath.  So  it  comes 
that  he  appears  a  rather  smooth  young  Titan, 
venting  his  Titanic  mood  of  rebellion  against  the 
old  Gods  in  classic  ease.  Emerson  was  endowed 
by  nature  with  a  reposeful  exterior  and  serenity 
in  the  midst  of  hottest  battle.  In  his  mother's 
household  he  seems  never  to  have  been  subjected 
to  any  violent  repression  of  his  youthful  effer 
vescences,  which  often  rouses  the  boy's  out 
break;  domestic  tyranny  was  apparently  quite 
absent  from  the  home's  authority.  Perhaps  the 
deeper  and  more  internal  was  fermenting  his  op 
position,  which  finally  broke  forth  into  the  voice 
of  denial  and  turned  to  a  far-sounding  clarion  of 
war.  "A  trip-hammer  with  an  Eolian  attach 
ment"  has  become  one  of  his  proverbs;  still,  in 
his  case  it  was  hardly  the  hammer  which  struck 
the  strings  of  the  harp,  but  the  soft  breath  of 
the  breeze.  External  manners  remained  to  the 


22        RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  FIRST. 

last  a  kind  of  sedative  for  the  interior  heat  of  a 
soul  set  on  fire.  Emerson's  lawlessness  was  won 
derfully  placid,  even  lawful ;  the  sweetest-tem 
pered  Anarch  he  would  appear  as  his  defiant 
words  fell  hissing-hot  from  his  lips.  But  all  this 
is  the  ripened  frurt  of  his  Second  Period,  into 
which  his  Apprenticeship  is  to  unfold. 

A  life  of  drifting  was  this  First  Period  for 
Emerson;  the  family  moved  a  number  of  times, 
the  home  and  its  inmates  changed  frequently, 
the  young  man's  employments  varied  consider 
ably,  finally  he  took  a  trip  abroad.  To  these 
outer  shiftings  there  corresponded  inner  fluctua 
tions,  and  he  found  no  anchorage  till  his  Ap 
prenticeship  was  over,  when  he  settled  at  Con 
cord,  and  his  indenture  to  Tradition  expired. 
But  through  all  these  mutations  the  cultural 
strand  was  never  broken,  he  clung  to  his  ideal, 
so  often  called  by  him  through  life  "the  Scholar," 
the  creative  master  of  the  printed  page  and  its 
manifold  contents.  He  never  sank  himself  into 
business  or  any  special  profession,  though  he 
tried  several;  even  his  traditional  vocation  he 
threw  up  after  a  brief  experience.  A  tentative 
life  this  Period  seems,  circling  over  the  earth  till 
he  settles  down  upon  his  perch  at  Concord. 

Still  this  unanchored  time,  lasting  quite  a  gen 
eration  of  years  and  overflowing  with  a  diversity 
of  experiences,  has  its  salient  crises  constituting 
subordinate  groups  of  events,  which  we  shall  call 
by  the  special  name  of  Epochs.  Accordingly  we 


EMERSON'S  APPRENTICESHIP.  £3 

intend  to  mark  with  decision  the  epochal  turns  in 
Emerson's  career,  as  well  as  their  large  inclusive 
sweeps  already  entitled  Periods.  Thus  we  strive 
to  keep  before  the  reader's  mind  the  capital  joints 
in  the  organism  of  Emerson's  life,  which  is  verily 
universal,  as  is  the  human  framework,  and  which, 
therefore,  bears  the  impress  of  all  biography,  reveal 
ing  the  common  structure  of  the  same  in  its  unitary 
process.  Let  us  repeat  this  integrating -thought :  in 
the  biographic  revelation  of  the  Emersonian  one 
self  we  are  to  see  the  image  and  the  movement  of 
the  All-Self ;  thus  is  man  approved  the  child  of  the 
Universe,  bearing  in  his  spirit  its  seal  of  creation. 

In  pursuance  of  such  a  plan  we  shall  mark  down 
in  advance  the  three  lesser  turns  or  links  of  the 
chain  which  interlocks  the  First  Period  into  one 
complete  round  of  Emerson's  evolution:  these  are 
its  three  Epochs. 

I.  His  Traditional  Schooling,  which  follows  the 
scholastic  precedents  of  the  time ;  he  runs  in  the  old 
academic  groove,  and  so  passes  his  educational  and 
professional  novitiate  which  concludes  with  his 
ordination  into  a  prescribed  ministry.  (1803-1829.) 

IT.  His  first  grand  Breach,  which  takes  place 
against  his  transmitted  calling;  its  sweep  moves 
from  his  acceptance  of  to  his  alienation  from  his 
traditional  world — a  tremendous  spiritual  Explo 
sion  reverberating  through  his  whole  life.  (1829- 
1832.) 

III.  His  Flight  and  Return — his  voyage  of  self- 
overcoming  arid  the  finrlinsr  of  h's  true  vocation — 


24        RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

all  of  which  may  be  summed  up  as  his  Recovery,  in 
which  he  is  also  schooled  to  Tradition  by  his  trip  to 
the  European  Past,  (1832-1835.) 

Thus  rounds  out  his  Apprenticeship  with  the  ces 
sation  of  his  drifting1,  with  the  stability  of  a  home, 
and  with  the  winning  of  his  world-view.  These 
decisive  nodes  of  his  First  Period  we  shall  empha 
size  in  the  three  following  Chapters. 

I  am  well  aware  that  this  somewhat  minute  and 
purposed  ordering  of  such  a  spontaneous  and  seem 
ingly  irregular  growth  as  is  a  human  life,  will  be 
regarded  in  certain  quarters  as  too  schematic  and 
artificial,  perchance  as  forced  and  fantastic.  And 
Emerson  following  his  native  push  for  sudden  sep 
arate  glimpses,  and  putting  chief  stress  upon  imme 
diate  atomic  inspirations,  can  be  cited  for  many  a 
fling  at  organized  thought.  Still  in  his  deeper  mo 
ments  he  was  well  aware  of  his  own  life's  essential 
turning-points,  and  we  shall  take  occasion  to  quote 
Emerson  himself  censuring  his  native  lack  of  a 
pervasive  order,  and  even  suggesting  his  own 
stages.  The  more  superficial  conscious  Emerson 
could  be  quite  an  ardent  wooer  of  chaos,  while  the 
deeper  unconscious  Emerson  was  indwelt  of  the  cos 
mos  wrhose  far-flashing  imagery  he  often  wields,  and 
whose  universal  harmony  was  his  constant  longing. 

As  already  indicated,  for  nearly  a  generation  of 
years  he  was  serving  his  Apprenticeship  during 
which  his  task  was  to  assimilate  "the  old  carcass 
of  tradition",  as  he  afterward  called  it  with  a 
somewhat  upturned  nose  at  its  ageing  decay.  Still 


EMERSON'S  APPRENTICESHIP.  25 

it  was  his  germinal  time  oi'  planting  and  nursing 
the  seeds  and  indeed  sprouts  of  all  the  fruit  which 
the  full-grown  tree  afterward  bore.  It  was  his 
baptism  in  the  fount  of  past  experience,  the  long 
testful  search  to  find  his  true  vocation,  the  win 
ning  of  his  basic  viewpoint  which  he  is  to  realize  in 
word  and  deed,  during  the  coming  Second  Period. 
Prospective,  potential,  acquisitional — but  let  us 
forward. 


CHAPTER  FIRST 

Traditional  Schooling- 
Emerson's  prescriptive  training  may  be  con 
ceived  to  last  till  the  close  of  his  academic  and 
theological  course;  that  is,  till  he  was  ordained 
with  due  ceremony  as  the  regular  minister  of  the 
Second  Unitarian  Church  of  Boston  in  1829. 
This  rather  long  First  Epoch  of  Emerson's 
career,  lasting  as  it  does  some  twenty-six  years, 
indicates  the  steadiness  if  not  the  slowness  of  his 
mental  growth.  Pie  obtained  the  customary  ad 
vantages  of  a  Boston  education,  though  his  fam 
ily  was  poor,  even  at  times  poverty-cursed  to  the 
point  of  lacking  food  and  raiment.  Probably  no 
boy  of  his  day  had  a  better  chance  at  learning, 
and  it  was  no  cause  of  harm  that  he  had  to  give 
some  effort  of  his  own  to  his  mind's  garden,  and 
to  endure  some  privation. 

Ralph  "Waldo  Emerson  was  born  on  the  25th 
of  May,  1803  in  the  old  parish-house  of  the  First 
Unitarian  Church  of  Boston,  of  which  his  father 
had  been  minister  at  that  date  some  four  years. 
The  latter,  the  Reverend  William  Emerson,  was 
in  turn  the  son  of  a  minister  also  called  William, 
who  was  located  at  Concord  where  he  built  the 
Old  Manse,  world-famous  in  letters  and  in  war, 
for  beside  housing  distinguished  writers,  it  had 

26 


TRADITIONAL  SCHOOLING.  27 

overlooked  the  battle-field  of  Concord  on  the 
memorable  nineteenth  day  of  April,  1775.  And 
on  the  same  day  it  saw  the  flash  of  that  verily 
time-defying  super-natural  shot  from  an  old 
squirrel  gun  which  was  "  heard  'round  the 
world,"  and  has  been  shooting  ever  since,  par 
ticularly  in  Yankeeland.  The  same  Reverend 
William  Emerson,  the  grandfather,  was  a  per- 
fervid  rebel  in  the  cause  of  the  American  Revo 
lution;  so  consuming  was  his  revolt  that  he  quit 
his  pastorate  at  Concord  the  very  next  month 
after  the  Declaration  of  Independence — seemingly 
almost  as  soon  as  the  news  had  arrived  from  Phila 
delphia — and  hastened  to  join  the  army  at  Ticon- 
deroga  as  chaplain,  where  he  died  shortly  after 
ward  of  camp-fever.  No  wonder  that  young 
Waldo  Emerson,  after  a  good  deal  of  wandering, 
will  at  last  gravitate  to  that  ancestral  atmosphere 
of  Concord  for  his  abiding  inspiration.  It  is 
sometimes  said  that  the  child  inherits  more  from 
the  grandfather  than  from  his  immediate  par 
ents  ;  if  so,  Emerson  was  born  a  preacher,  a 
scholar,  and  a  revolutionist. 

Nor  must  we  forget  another  item  in  the  mental 
outfit  of  this  notable  grandfather.  He  was  a  man 
of  literary  cultivation  and  creation;  he  not  only 
read  other  people's  poetry,  but  made  some  of 
his  own,  of  which  he  failed  not  to  have  a  good 
opinion.  On  his  way  to  the  battle-front  he  broke 
naturally  into  verse  in  which  he  saw  "the  out 
lines  of  a  fine  rhymester,"  possibly  a  foreshow  in 


28         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

himself  of  his  distinguished  grandson.  He  even 
indicates  in  a  letter  the  fatal  circumstance  (not 
very  clear  to  us  now)  but  for  which  "I'm  not 
sure  I  should  have  been  a  considerable  poet." 
Such  is  the  distant  gleam  of  him  preservd  to 
the  future  by  Mr.  Cabot,  Emerson's  biographer. 
Accordingly  in  the  early  Schooling  of  Emerson 
we  are  not  to  leave  out  the  tradition  of  kinship 
which  he  breathed  from  his  infancy.  His  Fam 
ily,  present  and  past,  was  his  soul's  first  environ 
ment,  and  remained  his  most  influential  institu 
tion,  though  he  often,  revolter  that  he  was,  reacted 
against  its  influence,  and  could  even  deny  its 
validity  in  extreme  moments.  Still  the  domestic 
tradition  with  its  line  of  semi-heroic  forbears 
kept  the  deepest  hold  upon  him,  when  every  other 
sort  of  tradition,  religious,  political,  economic, 
social,  educational,  had  been  battered  at  in 
thought,  and  by  him  largely  trampled  underfoot. 
However,  there  was  always  left  a  loop-hole 
through  which  the  institution  might  be  at  last 
rescued :  that  universal  safety-valve  variously 
called  by  him  the  Moral  Sentiment,  the  Divine 
Efflux,  the  Soul's  Inspiration,  the  Supernal  Judge 
within,  to  whose  dictatorship  alone  Emerson  con 
fessed  obedience.  No  other  autocracy  or  even 
authority  he  in  his  doctrine  allowed. 


ANCESTRY.  29 

I. 

ANCESTRY 

It  is  the  theme  which  the  students  of  Emerson 
must  first  grapple  with :  he  is  swathed  round  and 
round  with  ancestral  memories  reaching  back  six 
generations  and  confined  practically  to  the  one 
spot  where  the  first  progenitor  settled.  This  was 
the  Reverend  Peter  Bulkeley,  of  ancient  family 
and  considerable  property  in  England,  who  was 
educated  at  the  University  of  Cambridge,  and,  be 
coming  a  clergyman,  was  silenced  for  refusing  to 
conform  to  the  Anglican  Church.  Whereupon  he 
quit  the  old  country  for  New  England  in  1634 
(hence  he  was  not  on  board  of  the  Mayflower) 
and  pushed  from  the  seacoast  through  the  woods 
to  Musketaquid,  which  savage  rollicking  Indian 
name  he  turned  into  docile  Concord.  There  he, 
the  first  and  greatest  non-conformist  of  his  blood, 
preached  the  primitive  gospel  unde filed  by  his 
toric  rites  and  dogmas,  preluding  the  key-note  of 
his  illustrious  descendant,  Ralph  Waldo,  some  two 
centuries  later.  Moreover  he  too  employed  the 
printed  page,  and  wrote  one  of  the  earliest  books 
of  New  England.  A  strong  figure,  gigantic 
though  hazy  of  outline,  he  uprears  in  the  dawn 
of  a  new  civilization. 

Such,  then,  was  the  family's  first  great  ances 
tral  break  from  native  land  and  established  re 
ligion,  which  indeed  may  be  taken  as  a  type  of 
the  time's  movement,  The  life  of  the  Puritan  has 


30         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

percolated  through  history  in  a  line  of  daring  con 
flicts — with  England,  with  the  Ocean,  with  the 
Indian,  with  the  French,  with  the  climate;  at  the 
same  time  especially  raged  the  collision  wTith  him 
self  and  with  his  neighbor  of  a  different  con 
science.  But  most  deeply  in  him  thrilled  his 
political  revolt  from  the  mother-country  with  its 
consequent  letting  of  kindred  blood  during  the 
American  Revolution.  All  this  separative,  rebel 
lious  history  lay  in  the  Emerson  breed,  was  a  part 
of  the. Emerson  household,  a  strain  of  the  Emer 
son  consciousness.  The  boy  Waldo  from  his  in 
fancy  must  have  been  suckled  on  the  ancestral 
spirit  of  his  family  revealed  at  the  recurring 
crises  of  its  soul-testing  experiences.  The  women 
of  the  house  knew  its  story  as  well  as  the  men, 
and  told  it  more  sympathetically  to  the  listening 
youths  who  were  chiefly  under  their  care  at  home. 
Particularly  his  aunt,  Mary  Moody  Emerson,  ex 
pert  to  the  last  atom  on  genealogical  lore,  Waldo 
Emerson  has  crowned  with  an  evergreen  garland 
of  his  fame-giving  speech. 

The  attention  to  the  ancestral  past  is  character 
istic  of  New  England,  and  herein  Emerson  is  tlv> 
true  child  of  his  section.  To  be  sure,  all  the  old 
colonial  territory,  Northern  as  well  Southern,  i(; 
addicted  to  the  same  tendency.  Th.e  family-tree  is 
still  the  most  highly  cultivated  vegetable  in  Yankee- 
land,  and  the  Emersonian  specimen  of  it  is  no  ex 
ception.  Doubtless  offshoots  .have  migrated  to  the 
and  thereby  have  relaxed  if  not  lost  their  con- 


ANCESTRY.  3} 

nection  with  the  old  stock.  But  the  main  trunk  of 
Emerson's  family  remained  rooted  in  the  soil  of 
Concord  and  its  environs  for  more  than  two  hun 
dred  years,  just  while  the  vast  stream  of  migration 
was  swirling  over  the  Alleghanies  into  the  Missis 
sippi  Valley.  But  neither  Emerson  nor  any  of  his 
direct  forbears  ever  took  part  in  that  most  consid 
erable  nation-evolving  movement  of  American  his 
tory.  That  one  primordial  deed  of  old  Peter  Bulk- 
eley  in  quitting  his  native  sod  and  in  grappling 
with  the  pioneer's  life  and  its  stalwart  training, 
seems  to  have  been  enough  for  all  his  descendants  in 
the  line  down  to  our  Emerson,  for  they  could  not  be 
brought  to  repeat  it  in  spite  of  the  tense  allure 
ment  of  an  adventure  similar  to  the  heroic  pattern, 
but  not  equal.  Thus  on  the  one  traditional  spot 
they  kept  up  the  long  tradition  of  the  family  defi 
ant  of  Tradition.  For  this  reason  we  have  to  think 
that  Emerson,  though  of  course  a  born  American, 
was  never  completely  Americanized ;  he  never  went 
through  the  most  characteristic  and  formative  ex 
perience  of  his  native  country — not  he,  nor  his 
father  nor  his  father's  fathers  up  to  their  apostle 
Peter,  also  bearing  Heaven's  keys,  who  was  their 
first,  and  in  truth  their  only  pioneer,  as  well  as 
their  most  daring  denier  of  prescription.  The  re 
sult  was  Emerson  never  shared  in' the  town-build 
ing  and  the  state-making,  which  formed  the  su 
preme  institutional  discipline  of  the  men  who 
moved  to  the  West.  He  received  his  nation,  state, 
and  distinctively  his  community  as  gifts  from  his 


32         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

ancestors;  he  never  had  to  create  nor  yet  to  re 
create  the  social  order  around  him  and  .above  him. 
Possibly  it  was  for  this  reason  that  he  felt  some 
what  averse  to  it,  and  hardly  appreciated  its  sig 
nificance  in  the  new  world's  training.  His  social 
istic  and  at  times  even  anarchic  bent  was  in  part 
his  reaction  against  political  and  economic  as  well 
as  religious  forms  which  had  been  imposed  upon 
him  from  without  by  a  centuried  inheritance.  To 
be  sure  he  protested  against  Tradition,  but  he  never 
would  quit  his  traditional  world. 

It  may  be  also  added  that  Emerson  during  his 
entire  life  till  the  Civil  War  showed  a  singular 
aloofness  from  the  governing  powers  and  the  de 
velopment  of  the  total  country.  He  has  nothing 
distinctive  to  say  of  the  Constitution  and  the 
Union  and  their  founders,  nothing  of  the  great  Vir 
ginians  who  administered  the  republic  in  its  in 
fancy  and  made  it  a  marching  success.  George 
Washington  even  is  not  one  of  his  Representative 
Men,  for  all  of  whom  he  goes  to  Europe  in  his 
book.  In  fact  New  England,  especially  Emerson's 
Boston,  was  more  active  and  whole-hearted  in  the 
destruction  of  the  old  order  than  in  the  construc 
tion  of  the  new.  She  threw  the  tea  overboard  as  her 
typical  deed,  good  as  far  as  it  went,  but  not  cre 
ative.  She  sulked  after  the  Revolution  over  'the 
Southern  dominance  and  talked  of  another  separa 
tion,  with  perchance  a  new  cargo  of  tea  thrown 
overboard.  Herein  Emerson  was  sympathetic  with 
his  section.  Tn  his  Diary  he  has  little  but  sneers 


ANCESTRY.  33 

for  the  rulers  of  the  land,  seeing  their  weaknesses, 
but  hardly  appreciating  their  great  positive  work, 
its  difficulties  and  its  successes. 

Hence  we  have  to  confess  that  Emerson,  our 
greatest  literary  man,  has  not  given  expression  to 
the  Nation  as  such  in  its  entirety ;  provincial  he  re 
mained  during  his  best  years,  a  New  Englander  in 
his  highest  utterance,  and  it  is  from  this  view-point 
that  we  have  to  consider  him  in  his  supremacy,  yea, 
in  his  universality,  for  he  in  his  way  has  raised  to 
universal  import  his  limited  New  England.  Still 
it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  Emerson  was  nation 
alized  by  the  mighty  upheaval  of  1860,  though  he 
was  then  past  his  creative  period,  and  was  slowly 
sinking  into  the  eclipse  of  his  noontide  powers. 
Hence  he  has  left  no  adequate  expression  of  this 
stage  'of  his  development ;  he  no  longer  could  bring 
to  bloom  the  original  flower  of  his  Genius.  To  use 
his  own  image,  the  God  Terminus  had  cailed  his 
limit. 

Thus  Emerson  has  a  deep  ever-flowing  undercur 
rent,  not  exactly  of  ancestral  worship,  but  of  an 
cestral  over-lordship,  and  perchance  somewhat  of 
the  prejudice  of  the  clan — very  human  and  not  un 
lovely  in  his  case.  He,  the  foremost  foe  of  tradi 
tion,  still  remains  traditional  in  his  town-life  and 
in  his  kin-life,  to  both  of  which  we  shall  find  him 
recurring  with  proud  celebration  at  intervals  all  his 
days.  One  of  his  deeper  life-lines  is  this,  distinctly 
to  be  limned,  but  not  to  be  blackened. 


34        RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 


THE  PARENTAL  HOME 

It  is  recorded  that  "William  Emerson,  the  son  of 
the  Revolutionary  William  Emerson  of  Concord, 
already  mentioned,  and  also  minister,  was  married 
"to  the  pious  and  amiable  Ruth  Haskins"  of  Bos 
ton,  in  1796.  The  young  clergyman  was  trans 
ferred  three  years  later  from  a  poor  living  in  the 
country  to  a  wealthier  church  in  Boston,  where  he 
remained  till  his  death  in  1811.  It  would  seem 
that  he  was  a  man  of  good  'but  not  distinguished 
parts,  doing  his  work  acceptably  to  a  somewrhat 
critical  constituency,  hardly  rising  above  the  trans 
mitted  level,  and  not  sinking  below  it.  His  name  is 
dug  up  from  the  oblivion  of  old  records  and  is 
spoken  to-day,  because  he  was  father  to  an  undy 
ing  son,  who  reflected  upon  his  parents  a  gleam  of 
his  own  immortality. 

Still  for  the  sake  of  that  son,  the  most  striking 
fact  in  the  father's  life  should  be  set  down.  He 
has  left  in  writing  that  he  intended  to  quit  the 
rather  close  Boston  life  and  move  to  "Washington 
where  he  would  establish  what  may  be  called  a  Free 
Church  "in  which  there  was  to  be  no  written  ex 
pression  of  faith,"  quite  without  dogma,  "and  no 
subscription  to  articles";  then  in  such  an  enfran 
chised  atmosphere  he  would  "administer  the  ritu 
als  of  Christianity  to  all  who  would  observe  them 
without  any  profession  except  such  observance." 
A  daring  leap,  which  he  did  not  and  could  not  take 


THE  PARENTAL  HOME.  35 

at  that  time  and  iu  that  place;  but  later  his  son 
Waldo  will  take  it  even  in  Boston ;  with  what 
epoch-turning  consequences  will  hereafter  be  told. 
Just  now  we  shall  simply  mark  the  prophetic 
thought  of  the  young  preacher  William  Emerson 
forecasting  in  purpose  the  deed  which  his  heir, 
natural  and  spiritual,  will  realize. 

The  father  in  the  midst  of  his  ripest  activity 
passed  away  at  the  age  of  forty-two,  leaving  to  the 
mother  the  care  and  education  as  well  as  the  phys 
ical  maintenance  of  five  boys,  the  eldest  of  whom 
was  hardly  ten  years  old.  Friends  gave  help,  still 
she  had  to  keep  boarders  and  largely  did  her  own 
work,  with  the  aid  of  her  children.  Thus  Waldo 
Emerson  as  a  boy  had  his  training  in  kitchen  prac 
tice,  even  in  washing  dishes.  It  is  handed  down 
that  the  family  was  sometimes  actually  without 
food,  when  Aunt  Mary  Moody  Emerson  would 
nerve  up  the  boys  by  "stories  of  heroic  endurance." 
Raiment  too  fell  short,  when  Waldo  and  his  brother 
Edward  had  but  one  great-coat  between  them  for 
protection  against  the  fierce  New  England  winter. 
Still  all  the  children  went  to  school  and  gained  a 
Bosto'n  education,  probably  then  the  best  of  the 
kind  anywhere.  This  severe  discipline  of  early  pov 
erty  wove  a  telling  strain  of  experience  into  Emer 
son 's  subsequent  life.  He  knew  the  value  of  eco 
nomic  freedom  to  the  man  who  wishes  to  follow  his 
own  supreme  call.  Precious  frugality  at  the  start 
taught  him  the  lesson  of  true  independence.  When 
later  he  established  his  fortress  at  Concord,  it  could 


36         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

never  be  starved  into  capitulation  by  any  adverse 
stroke  of  fate. 

Thus  Emerson's  early  schooling  was  bravely 
fought  for,  and  had  to  be  won  against  the  grip  of 
hunger  upon  his  throat.  That  furious  wrestle  with 
spare  diet  during  his  growing  years  would  seem  to 
have  left  its  permanent  mark  upon  his  physical  sys 
tem.  Did  he  not  always  have,  like  the  thinker  Cas- 
sius,  a  lean  and  hungry  look?  Whatever  be  the 
cause,  all  the  rest  of  the  children  drooped  gradually 
graveward,  except  Waldo  and  an  elder  brother. 
And  Waldo  during  his  young-manhood  appears 
more  or  less  of  an  invalid,  who  was  at  last  forced 
to  take  an  ocean  voyage  which  not  only  rescued  him 
to  health  but  indurated  him  to  exposure  and  labor, 
till  at  last  all-releasing  old-age  covered  him  over 
with  its  No  More. 

When  he  had  reached  ten  years,  Waldo  entered 
the  Boston  Latin  School  with  a  boy's  eager  look 
forward  to  Harvard  College.  But  in  1814  Hunger's 
clutch  pressed  still  tighter,  the  cause  being  the  war 
with  Great  Britain  whose  cruisers  cut  off  supplies 
by  sea.  Flour  rose  to  seventeen  dollars  a  barrel, 
and  other  provisions  in  proportion.  The  result  was 
that  the  family  had  to  flee  to  the  country  and  was 
domiciled  at  Concord  for  a  year  with  the  kindred 
there.  That  straitened  household  produces  in  the 
reader  an  uncanny  feeling  of  an  ever-present  short 
coming  of  life's  necessaries,  which  is  planting  the 
seeds  of  the  family's  looming  tragedy.  From  such 
a  fate,  however,  young  Waldo,  after  much  suffering 


MARY  MOODY  EMERSON.  37 

and  anxiety  through  a  good  many  clouded  years,  is 
happily  ransomed.  But  amid  the  stress  and  dis 
tress  of  this  strenuous  life-battle  rises  the  form  of 
a  stalwart  woman,  Aunt  Mary,  already  mentioned, 
who  brings  much  inspiration  and  some  cash  to  those 
sinking  hearts.  To  her  let  an  appreciative  word  be 
consecrated. 

III. 
MARY  MOODY  EMERSON 

The  aunt  of  Waldo  Emerson,  sister  of  his  father, 
born  in  1775,  deserves  to  have  her  features  chiseled 
and  her  bust  set  up  in  a  prominent  niche  of  her 
nephew's  biography.  Through  his  life-long  diary, 
besown  everywhere  with  his  soul's  seeds,  he  often 
bids  us  glimpse  the.  all-coercive  form  of  his  aunt 
Mary,  and  hear  her  moulding  thoughts  as  well  as 
her  pounding  words.  Out  of  dozens  of  similar  sen 
tences,  let  the  following  one  from  his  later  life  be 
selected,  as  typical :  ' '  She  must  always  occupy  a 
saint 's  place  in  my  household ;  and  I  have  no  hour 
of  poetry  or  philosophy,  since  I  knew  these  things, 
into  which  she  does  not  enter  as  a  genius."  Thus 
his  chief  spiritual  realms  are  originally  hers.  . 

She  is,  accordingly,  acclaimed  the  Muse  of  that 
peculiar  Emersonian  composite  of  religion,  poetry 
and  philosophy — the  three  interfused  elements  of 
his  nature  and  of  his  achievement.  To  him  she  was 
the  towering  personality  of  the  family  present  and 
past  for  two  centuries.  To  be  sure,  the  competition 


38         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

before  he  came  was  not  great ;  no  ancestor  ever  rose 
much  above  the  average  level  of  local  fame;  a  na 
tional  reputation  cannot  be  found  uprearing  along 
the  line  of  worthy  and  learned  ministers.  She  was 
the  one  genius  of  the  entire  kinship  old  and  new. 
Thus  the  supremely  inspired  one  of  the  -blood,  the 
best  representative  of  the  creative  effluence  from 
above  was  a  woman. 

She  stood  in  close  formative  relation  to  Emerson 
and  his  brothers,  when  they  all  were  young  and  in 
the  process  cf  being  educated.  Into  their  tradi 
tional  schooling  she  injected  an  original  strain,  an 
elemental  power  of  her  own.  She  even  wrote  the 
boys '  prayers,  and  these  * '  still  sound  in  my  ear  with 
their  prophetic  and  apocalyptic  ejaculations,"  con 
fessed  the  prophet  Emerson  many  years  later.  And 
the  young  preacher  Emerson  emphasizes  that 
"when  I  came  to  write  sermons  for  my  church," 
the  chief  source  drawn  upon  was  "my  remembrance 
of  her  conversation  and  letters."  He  had  but  to 
repeat  the  lofty  dictations  cf  her  spirit.  In  1837  he 
wrote  of  her :  "  The  depth  of  the  religious  senti 
ment  which  I  knew  in  my  Aunt  Mary,  imbuing  all 
her  genius  .  . '  .  was  itself  a  culture,  an  educa 
tion."'  Decidedly  docs  he  ascribe  to  her  first  dis 
cipline  the  divine  descent  and  overflow  permeating 
all  his  writings. 

Still  Emerson  did  not  accept  her  doctrine  in  full. 
She  was  for  him  but  an  outlet  tapping  strait-coated 
ancient  Puritanism  and  letting  it  flow  into  loose- 
zoned  modern  Liberalism.  An  intermediary  he  de- 


MARY  MOODY  EMERSON.  39 

scribes  her  (1837)  :  "The  genius  of  that  woman, 
the  key  to  her  life  is  in  the  conflict  of  the  old  and 
new  ideas  in  New  England."  She  clung  to  both 
sides,  overarching  them,  and  conjoining  them  even 
in  their  strife,  and  thus  she  became  a  bridge  for  her 
nephew,  undoubtedly  her  spiritual  son,  who  could 
thereby  pass  over  into  his  appointed  heritage.  That 
turned  out  for  the  man  also  God's  bridge  from 
Heaven  to  Earth,  across  which  he  travels  hundreds 
of  times,  telling  then  of  his  journey.  Ultimately  it 
is  just  this  trip  which  he  describes  in  his  writings, 
and  he  first  heard  it  told  at  Aunt  Mary's  knee  in 
all  the  rapture  of  a  poetic  imagination. 

However,  the  divine  seeress  had  her  devil,  as 
usual.  Hear  again  her  reporter's  record :  She  was 
"the  heir  cf  whatever  was  rich  and  profound  in 
the  old  religion, ' '  yet  with  her  passionate  piety  was 
coupled  "the  fatal  gift  cf  penetration,"  which 
landed  her  into  denial,  "and  she  was  thus  a  reli 
gious  skeptic ' ' — a  combination  which  we  shall  often 
note  in  her  soul 's  child,  "Waldo.  Listen  to  another 
of  his  repetitions:  "She  held  on  with  both  hands 
to  the  faith  cf  the  past  generation  .  .  .  yet  all 
the  time  she  doubted  and  denied  it" — she  too  being 
dragged  hellward  by  the  fiend  Mephistopheles. 
Hence  there  runs  an  infernal  streak  through  her 
diary, -as  when  she  cries  out  in  despair:  "I  have 
given  up,  the  last  year  cr  two,  the  hope  of  dying" 
— verily  an  echo  of  the  thunder-borne  Dantesque 
ejaculation  of  the  doomed :  Leave  ye  all  hope  be 
hind.  She  persisted  for  years  in  having  her  bed 


40         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

made  in  the  form  of  a  coffin,  which  haunted  her 
also  in  daytime,  since  she  would  see  its  image  cast 
on  the  sidewalk  before  her  from  a  neighboring 
church  steeple.  Unique  Calvanistic  power  of  that 
religious  structure,  was  it  not?  Even  her  shroud 
she  made  which  grisly  old  Death  refused  to  use,  and 
so  she  took  it  for  a  night-gown  or  a  day-gown  or 
even  a  riding-gown  on  horseback,  until  it  was  worn 
out.  "Then  she  had  another  made  up,"  lectures 
her  spirit's  fosterling,  Emerson,  about  her  in  his 
late  life,  and  further  caps  his  eulogy :  "I  believe 
she  wore  out  a  great  many."  In  ghoulish  glee  for 
the  grave 's  imagery  she  puts  Heine  to  flight,  invok 
ing  her.  own.  rotten  corpse  :  .  "  0  dear  worms,  how 
:they will  some  sure  time  take  down  this  tedious 
'tabernacle,  most  valuable  companions,  by  gnawing 
:~away  the  meshes  which  have  chained  "—my"  mind ! 
.No. wonder-Emerson  thought  of  Dante's  Inferno  in 
-i^eaxiing  some  of  her  grewsome  outbursts,  And  we 
"may  here  note  a  difference  in  manner  and  power  of 
expression.  Emerson  never  wrote  in  such  a  vol- 
"cania  style,  he  was  too  measured  and  classic ;  but 
Aunt  Mary  often  overflowed  into  a  lava-stream  of 
Carlylese  before  Carlyle.  She  could  in  the  mood 
dam-ii  all  creation,  -impartially  -  including  herself : 
-"-Folly  follows 'me  as/the  shadow  does.  the.  form.-" 
-'.  v:Yery  unexpected : is  the  reader's  meeting  with 
such  a  Titanic  character  in  the  Emersonian  kinship. 
A  more  original  elemental  thrust  of  Nature  lay  in 
her  than  in  Emerson  himself.  But  it  seems  she 
could  not  brinsr  into  shape  the  outpour  of  her  rule- 


MARY  MOODY  EMERSON.  41 

less  energies;  she  began  and  ended  with  a  sort  of 
germinal  chaos  in  writ  and  speech,  void  of  any 
plastic  gift.  But  such  primordial  manna  appears 
to  have  been  the  best  aliment  for  the  growing  talent 
of  Emerson;  indeed  we  may  judge  from  his  state 
ments  that  he  often  went  back  to  take  fresh  creative 
draughts  from  this  first  fountain  of  his  Genius.  She 
too  kept  a  Diary,  out  of  which  he  records  himself 
sipping  with  Bacchic  exaltation. 

In  spite  of  her  courtship  of  Death's  horrors — 
the  only  courtship  she  ever  indulged  in,  for  the  woo 
ing  of  a  living  man  she  would  not  tolerate,  and  so 
she  remained  a  peripatetic  nun  of  Puritanism — 
she  persisted  in  clinging  to  hated  life  some  eighty- 
eight  years.  But  age  could  not  wither  her  or  stale 
her  flamboyant  powers,  and  hence  Thoreau's  exal 
tation  :  ' '  Miss  Mary  Emerson  is  here,  the  youngest 
person  in  Concord,  though  about  eighty."  Albeit 
Emerson  calls  Death  "the  Muse  of  her  genius," 
with  whom  was  yoked  an  inspired  Poverty,  still  both 
these  friends  knew  how  to  slip  from  her  eager 
clutch,  and  escaped  for  long  from  her  loving  hug. 
A  female  Prometheus  affined  to  the  old  order  yet 
defiant  of  it — she  would  allow  nobody  to  -  abuse 
her  dear  New  England  Galvanism  but  herself.  She 
quarreled  with  her  'budding  nephew  Waldo  for  his 
Transcendentalism,  yet  she  was  transcendental  be 
fore  him  and  really  taught  him.  Most  fantastical 
of  human  specimens,  she  would  burn  up  in  her 
scoffs  Emerson's  fantasticalities,  "his  high  airy 
speculations,"  which  were  her  own,  though  a  good 


i2         RALPH  WALDO  ^-PERSON—PART  FTRST. 

deal  trimmed.  And  so  she  roamed  boarding  around 
and  falling  out  with  her  board  over  a  good  part  of 
New  England. 

As  her  much-wooed  suitor  Death  did  not  marry 
her  and  with  her  take  the  wedding-trip  to  dusky 
Dis,  till  1863,  she  must  have  seen  the  rise  and  the 
culmination  of  her  illustrious  nephew's  greatness. 
He  has  ennobled  her  with  many  lofty,  even  if  in 
consistent  titles — Muse,  Genius,  Sybil,  Saint, 
Prophetess,  and  the  bodeful  Cassandra.  She  was 
like  him  an  insatiable  Diarist,  scribbling  "endless 
diaries  whose  central  theme  is  her  relation  to  the 
Divine  Being" — which  is  not  far  away  from  his 
central  theme  also.  Moreover  she  was  the  deposi 
tory  of  the  f amity's  sacred  folk-lore,  the  store  of 
"hoarded  traditions,"  transmitted  orally  and 
piously  recounting  "so  many  godly  lives  and  godly 
deaths  of  sainted  kindred ' '  from  the  earliest  settle 
ment  of  the  savage  land— the  unprinted  Lives  of  the 
Saints,  a  Book  of  Puritan  Martyrology  recalling 
with  sympathy  the  miraculous  interventions  of 
Providence  and  the  raptures  of  the  expiring  breath 
of  the  Blessed.  All  this  sacred  material  of  family 
tradition  was  hers — she  being  its  special  custodian 
and  dispenser. 

And  here  it  should  be  added  that  Aunt  Mary  was 
a  furious  believer  in  war's  fury,  proclaiming  her 
self  Death's  very  Muse  and  disdaining  the  senti 
mental  mushiness  of  the  Lord's  pacificism.  Mili 
tant  she  was  in  her  own  right ;  her  life  seemed  one 
long  campaign  of  many  pitched  battles  mid  much 


MARY  MOODY  EMERSON.  43 

marching  and  counter-marching,  while  war's  alar 
ums  resounded  about  her  wherever  she  camped. 

More  than  in  any  other  personality  was  Emer 
son  inclined  to  see  in  her  his  distinctive  selfhood 
foreshowing  his  doctrine  like  a  female  John  the 
Baptist.  Rather  gingerly  he  lets  out  his  secret  con 
viction,  inasmuch  as  "I  sometimes  fancy  I  detect 
in  her  writings  .  .  .  her  organic  dislike  to  any 
interference,  any  mediation  between  her  and  the 
Author  of  her  being" — she  really  rejects  the  divine 
Mediator,  though  she  pays  "courtly  and  polite 
homage  to  the  name  and  dignity  of  Jesus. ' '  Verily 
she,  though  madly  denying  it,,  was  the  herald  of 
Emersonianism  in  advance  of  Emerson,  whom  we 
shall  find  to  the  last  the  disliker,  yea  the  antagonist 
of  the  Christian  idea  of  Mediation— on  this  side  a 
kind  of  Christian  Antichrist.  Her  solitary  indi 
vidual  life  he  celebrated  as  if  quite  like  his  own  ;.as 
hers,  so  is  his  supreme  relation  that  of  "the  alone 
to  the  Alone." 

Emerson  it  would  seem  by  his  passing  allusions, 
must  have  read  a  good  deal  in  his  Aunt.  Mary's 
Diary,  of  which  he  absorbed  not  a  little  into  his 
own.  A  vast  creative  protoplasm  it  appears,  quite 
formless  but  perchance  formable;  -he  took  it  'and 
wrought  it  over  after  his  own  impress. ..  We  surmise 
that  his  Journals  likewise  were  influenced  by  hers, 
— not  imitated,  but  prompted.  For  his  too  are 
protoplasmic,  showing  the  first  gushes  of  his  cre 
ative  work,  these  being  afterwards  elaborated  into 


44         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

his  higher  literary  forms,  such  as  the  Essay  and  the 
Address. 

A  demonic  character  we  have  to  conceive  her, 
with  a  strain  of  Promethean  revolt  ever  seeking  to 
•burst  her  transmitted  Puritanic  fetters;  yet  ever 
finding  herself  chained  to  the  adamant  of  the  New 
England  Caucasus.  The  most  influential  figure  in 
Emerson's  early  environment  we  may  regard  her, 
and  the  most  colossal  in  native  power,  if  we  dare 
look  at  her  through  his  eyes.  As  I  read  him,  he 
deemed  her  genius  mightier  than  his  own,  though 
quite  unbalanced,  deeply  disordered,  and  hence  im 
possible  of  corresponding  fruition.  More  Titanic. 
more  elemental  in  cosmic  energy  than  he  could  be, 
but  he  was  gifted  with  order,  with  industry,  with 
Yankee  common-sense  to  sober  his  God-coercing 
idealism.  But  she  was  in  her  very  magnitude  an 
enormous  grotesque — really  a  comic  character. 
Hence  Emerson  with  all  his  admiration  could  say 
of  her  end :  ' '  And  when  at  last  her  release  arrived, 
the  event  of  her  death  had  really  such  a  comic 
tinge  in  the  eyes  of  every  one  who  knew  her  that  her 
friends  feared,  they  might  at  her  funeral" — do 
what — laugh. 

-Emerson's  Aunt  Mary  seems  for  a  time  to  .have 
been,  supplanted  by  another. woman-character  quite 
as  overtowering.  but  more  efficacious — rMargaret 
Fuller,  also  a  right  Titaness  in  revolt  against  Zeus 
and  the  established  Olympian  order.  She  became 
closely  interwrought  with  Emerson's  most  creative 
Epoch  (1835-1845).  as  he  narrates  the  fact,  and 


EMER80X  AT  COLLEGE.  45 

did  much,  probably  the  most,  for  the  propagation 
of  his  message.  "We  are  inclinded  to  believe  that 
the  strongest  personalities  in  Emerson's  nearer  en 
vironment  were  these  two  women.  Name  the  man 
of  his  circle  who  was  the  equal  of  either  in  the  gift 
of  original,  elemental  genius.  But  both  lacked  the 
gift  of  formative  expression,  perchance  through 
their  revolt  against  transmitted  form.  Emerson 
has  written  biographies  of  both. 

IV. 

EMERSON  AT  COLLEGE 

In  those  critically  educative  years  of  adoles 
cence,  between  fourteen  and  eighteen,  Emerson 
passed  through  his  collegiate  course — a  time  of 
life's  changes  physical  and  mental.  It  was  a 
break  from  home  with  its  dominant  feminine  in 
fluence  into  a  purely  masculine  world,  some 
what  monastic,  with  its  own  goal  and  spirit. 
The  object  was  to  acquire  the  accepted  training 
in  the  humanities — languages  ancient  and  mod 
ern,  including  some  science,  literature  and  phi 
losophy.  Thus  the  youth  was  ushered  into  a 
strange  communal  life  which  he  also  had  to 
learn  about  and  to  work  in,  this  being  by  no 
means  a  negligible  part  of  the  curriculum.  From 
1817  till  1821  Emerson  was  a  student  of  Harvard 
College,  already  venerable  with  nearly  two  hun 
dred  years  of  existence. 

This  institution  of  learning  was  not  only  hoary, 


46        RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

but  somewhat  mossy ;  it  still  clung  largely  to  tra 
dition  in  education,  being  chiefly  patterned  after 
the  English  High  School  of  the  Renascence.  Ex 
cellence  it  had,  as  far  as  it  went.  But  already  in 
Emerson's  time  new  ideas  and  new  methods  had 
been  slowly  percolating  through  the  old  body, 
being  introduced  by  two  or  three  professors  who 
had  studied  in  German  Universities.  Emerson 
especially  mentions  Edward  Everett  as  a  coming 
light-bearer  from  abroad  as  well  as  a  beacon  in 
himself,  through  his  native  gift  of  expression. 
But  the  College  as  a  whole  plodded  along  in  the 
ancient  routine.  Men  of  talent  and  erudition 
were  certainly  among  his  instructors,  fulfilling 
well  their  prescribed  duty,  perchance  overfilling 
it  at  times;  but  the  young  aspirer  seems  to  have 
met  in  that  faculty  no  man  of  over-mastering 
genius,  no  profoundly  original  character.  I  ven 
ture  to  think  that  Emerson  on  his  graduation 
day,  receiving  his  diploma  and  glancing  down 
the  line  of  professors,  could  not  help  musing  to 
himself :  Not  one  of  you  in  creative  poteiice,  and 
in  mind-building  influence  over  me  is. the  equal 
of  my  Aunt  Mary. 

Still  the  social  and  educational  dominance  of 
Harvard  streams  pro  and  con  through  Emerson's 
entire  life,  stimulating  him.  especially  to  antag 
onism.  Not  a  little  of  his  best  discipline  lay  in 
overcoming  the  economic  difficulties  on  his  path. 
He  largely  earned  his  way  by  hiring  as  messenger 
boy  to  the  President,  bv  tntorir.gr  backward  stu- 


EMERSON    17'  COLLEGE.  47 

dents,  and  even  by  waiting  on  the  table  at  the 
College  Commons.  Later  he  taught  school  in  va 
cation.  He  gained  some  money  by  prices  in  com 
position  and  in  declamation.  Significant  are  the 
repeated  donations  of  money  which  his  mother 
received  for  his  education  and  that  of  his  broth 
ers,  showing  the  universal  interest  in  schooling. 
Thus  his  college-course  was  also  a  battle  with  pov 
erty,  which  left  its  marks,  if  not  its  scars  upon 
him  ever  afterward.  His  main  ambition  at  this 
time  seems  to  lie  in  the  direction  of  eloquence : 
like  the  majority  of  American  boys  he  would  be 
come  an  orator.  He  had  already  apparently  come 
under  the  spell  of  Daniel  "Webster,  greatest  of  his 
kind  in  New  England.  Everett's  rhetoric  was 
honey  to  him,  which  he  chased  after  at  every  op 
portunity.  Very  sweet,  too,  must  have  been  the 
triumph  felt  in  receiving  the  Boylston  prize  for 
declamation,  thirty  bright  dollars,  which,  how 
ever,  had  to  pay  for,  not  his  mother's  new  shawl 
as  intended,  but  the.  family's  bread  already  eatenV 
He  had  a  hand  in  forming  a  club  whose  main 
object  was  to  practice  in  extemporaneous  speak 
ing.  "Whether  this  oratory  was  to  fulminate  from 
the  pulpit  or  the  hustings,  he  probably  did  not 
then  determine  even  to  himself.  The  training 
made  good  later  in  the  Emersonian  Lyceum. 

Naturally  reminscences  were  eagerly  sought  in 
his  aged  days  of  greatness  from  his  still  living  fel 
low-students  concerning  the  most  influential  man 
of  thought  that  Harvard  ever  produced.  The  re- 


48         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

suit  on  the  whole  indicates  that  Emerson  was 
hardly  up  to  the  average  of  studentship.  A  fa 
mous  classmate  of  his,  Josiah  Quincy,  declared 
that  to  him  Emerson  gave  "no  sign  of  the  power 
that  was  fashioning  itself  for  leadership  in  a  new 
time."  In  a  class  of  59  he  stood  30,  hitting  the 
middle  as  near  as  possible ;  but  his  son  intimates 
that  his  scholarship  by  itself  would  have  put  him 
still  lower,  since  he  received  ranking  credit  for 
his  unblemished  deportment.  A  good  boy  but  a 
poor  scholar — he  quite  failed  in  Mathematics,  but 
did  take  a  fancy  to  Greek,  seemingly  not  with 
much  violence,  liking  the  teacher,  Professor  Ever 
ett,  better  than  the  subject.  Still  Emerson  shows 
a  strain  of  Greek  serenity  in  writ  and  deed,  na 
tive  to  him  seemingly  rather  than  acquired  from 
deep  study  of  the  Hellenic  spirit. 

"We  see  by  his  Journal  that  he  was  already 
choice  of  word  and  phrase,  selecting  the  best  ex 
amples  of  both  from  his  desultory  browsing  of 
books.  Poetical  expressions  he  jotted  down, 
striking  passages  were  paraphrased  and  probably 
memorized ;  his  sense  of  style  was  distinctly  culti 
vated.  In  especial  he  copied  often  the  idiomatic 
turns  from  the  letters  of  his  Aunt  Mary,  who  must 
have  been  his  ideal  of  lofty  utterance.  It  is  said 
that  he  knew  Shakespeare  almost  by  heart  when 
he  entered  College,  evidently  attracted  by  the 
poet's  wrord-power  and  grandiose  expression. 
Really  Montaigne  gave  his  most  palatable  mental 
pabulum  at  this  time,  and  he  never  got  over  his 


AT  COLLEGE.  49 

dear  skeptic.  He  neglected  Locke  and  Paley  in 
the  prescribed  course,  and  feasted  on  Plato  and 
Plutarch  outside  of  the  oppressive  routine.  Re 
served,  isolated,  introverted — he  seemed,  said  an 
observer,  "to  dwell  apart  as  if  in  a  tower,"  very 
like  the  later  man  ensconced  in  his  Castle  of 
Defiance  at  Concord,  his  defensive  and  offensive 
rampart. 

So  not  only  Harvard,  but  the  world  asks,  how 
did  this  great  man  of  ours  get  to  be?  Just  now 
we  probe  into  that  transitional  time  which  is  com 
ing  to  be  known  as  the  adolescent  stage.  In  out 
ward  appearance  he  is  following  the  transmitted 
curriculum  of  study,  but  inwardly  he  is  starting 
his  own  way.  Placid  on  the  surface  but  in  a  pro 
test  underneath,  he  takes  two  courses,  the  pre 
scribed  and  the  self -chosen — a  real  regularity  but 
an  ideal  vagabondage.  The  dullard  was  on  top, 
but  the  genius  was  secretly  at  work. 

The  great  national  event  of  this  time  was  the 
Missouri  Compromise  of  1820.  But  Emerson  was 
not  stirred  by  it  nor  was  his  environment.  It  con 
cerned  mainly  the  West,  to  whose  hope  there  was 
little  response  in  Boston;  for  the  West  was  then 
looked  upon  with  doubt  if  not  dislike  by  New 
England.  And  the  College  was  apathetic  about 
the  Nation,  while  in  religion  it  led  a  more  nega 
tive  than  constructive  life,  whereof  Emerson  is  to 
cull  no  small  experience  for  his  future  task. 

So  the  ancestral  youth  goes  to  the  ancestral 
College  and  acquires  a  fair  modicum  of  ancestral 


50         RALPH  WALDO   EMERSOX—PART  FIRST. 

lore — a  pretty  heavy  dose  of  Tradition.  Still  we 
can  feel  that  Emerson  already  in  his  teens  was 
secretly  bent  011  being  something  more  than  the 
son  of  his  fathers,  than  the  offshoot  of  a  pedigree. 
It  would  seem  that  his  main  push  during  collegiate 
years  was  toward  public-speaking,  and  the  ex 
ternal  incentive  thereto  was  very  strong,  for  this 
time  saw  the  supreme  efflorescence  in  Massachu 
setts  of  American  oratory  culminating  in  Web 
ster,  who,  as  central  was  encircled  by  numerous 
brilliant,  though  lesser  luminaries.  Eloquence 
was  then  the  most  original,  beautiful,  and  coveted 
utterance  of  human  spirit,  cultivated  by  the  or 
ator,  preacher,  lecturer,  even  by  the  professor. 
Herein  Emerson  at  College  partook  of  the  special 
aspiration  of  the  time :  he  would  be  a  speaker, 
and  such  was  he  to  the  close  of  his  active  days. 
But  ere  this  ambition  could  be  fulfilled,  he  had  to 
stem  the  ever-returning  pressure  of  poverty  by  a 
more  handy  vocation — school-teaching. 

V. 
THE  SCHOOLMASTER  EMERSON 

The  graduate  Emerson,  stepping  out  of  his  aca 
demic  hall  into  the  world,  finds  himself  and  his  next 
of  kin  hungry,  or  at  least  threatened  with  lack  of 
bread.  He  seizes  the  first  possible  opening  to  make 
a  few  dollars  by  a  kind  of  work  in  which  he  had  ar- 
ready  had  some  experience — that  of  teaching.  Thus 
for  nearly  a  quadrenmum  (1821-1825)  Emerson 


THE  SCHOOLMASTER  EMER80X.  51 

turns  schoolmaster,  with  considerable  financial 
profit,  but  with  little  pedagogical  success,  as  he 
reports  on  his  case. 

During  his  entire  college  course  Emerson  had 
felt  himself  compelled  at  intervals  to  interrupt  his 
regular  task  and  to  teach  school.  In  the  Freshman 
year  we  find  by  a  letter  that  he  is  doing  work  of 
that  kind  at  Waltham ;  already  he  looks  forward  to 
the  day  "when  he,  having  graduated,  will  study 
divinity  and  keep  school  at  the  same  time.''  Such 
were  the  two  vocations  which  he  had  then  in  mind 
— one  the  underling  of  the  other.  And  in  his 
Senior  year  he  again  had  to  quit  Cambridge  and  to 
ply  his  schoolcraft  "in  my  log-house  on  the  moun 
tains"  whose  locality  he  kept  so  concealed  that  his 
intimate  friend  and  biographer,  Mr.  Cabot,  failed 
to  identify  it.  But  his  Journal  (dated  December 
15,  1820,  and  hence  a  few  months  before  his  gradu 
ation)  speaks  of  his  presence  in  "a  hot,  stinking, 
dirty  A  B  spelling-school"  out  of  which  he  has  to 
run  into  the  fresh  air,  with  gratitude  to  God. 

But  when  he  had  graduated,  his  elder  brother 
William,  who  had  built  up  a  successful  school  for 
young  ladies  which  occupied  his  mother's  house  in 
Boston,  took  him  as  assistant,  In  this  work  he  re 
mained  somewhat  less  than  four  years.  He  cele 
brates  his  release  under  date  of  January  25,  1825 : 
"I  have  locked  up  my  school,  and  affect  the  scholar 
at  home."  He  no  longer  needed  to  teach  in  order 
to  fend  off  want :  ( '  Ambitious  hopes  have  been  en 
gendered  by  the  increase  of  value  of  the  old  prop- 


52        RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

erty  on  Main  Street. "  Then  we  hear  of  this  height 
of  pedogogical  good-luck:  "I  have  earned  two  or 
three  thousand  dollars,  which  have  paid  my  debts" 
and  brought  other  blessings  of  freedom.  Some  of 
the  school's  funds  were  applied  to  sending  his 
brother  William  to  Germany  for  study.  The  grip 
of  poverty  no  longer  clutches  the  Emerson  house 
hold,  and  Ralph  Waldo  can  now  start  to  take  the 
next  step  in  his  career — preparation  for  his  ances 
tral  calling,  the  ministry. 

Thus  young  Emerson  will  travel  a  new  signifi 
cant  arc  of  his  life's  round,  undergoing  nearly  an 
other  quadrennial  discipline,  which  now  takes  the 
form  of  imparting  the  traditional  instruction  he 
has  received.  From  a  wholly  masculine  environ 
ment  at  College,  he  is  suddenly  whelmed  again  into 
a  purely  feminine  association,  but  very  different 
from  that  of  his  home.  At  first  he  was  the  assist 
ant,  but  during  the  last  year  in  the  absence  of  his 
brother  he  was  the  principal.  That  school  gave 
him  a  new  experience  beside  the  pedagogical;  in 
the  presence  of  the  other  half  of  humanity,  he 
could  hardly  help  feeling  his  own  halfness.  Long 
afterwards  when  a"n  old  man,  he  dared  broach  a 
little  of  his  ancient  emotion:  "I  was  nineteen, 
had  grown  up  without  sisters,  and  in  my  solitary 
and  secluded  way  of  living,  had  no  acquaintance 
with  girls,"  and  hence  not  much  with  himself. 
But  listen:  "I  still  recall  my  terrors  at  entering 
the  school,  my  timidities  at  French,  the  infirmities 
of  my  cheek,  and  my  occasional  admiration  of 


THE  SCHOOLMASTER  EMERSON.  ~>8 

some  of  my  pupils'* — 0  Emerson,  go  on,  do  not 
stop  there,  betray  us  not  in  such  a  wrench  of 
expectancy ! — But  at  the  psychologic  moment  he 
breaks  into  Latin,  very  ambiguous  Latin  too — 
and  quits  the  confessional  of  love  for  something 
indifferent,  never  again  to  pick  up  the  lost  thread 
in  any  direct  confidential  communication  to  his 
eager  biographers.  His  writings  give  hardly 
more  than  an  amatory  lisp,  now  and  then  audible 
to  an  eavesdropping  posterity. 

Still  we  may  find  some  remote  hint  of  his  feel 
ings  at  this  time  in  the  lines  headed  Grood-bye 
which  at  present  stand  in  front  of  his  poetical 
works  as  a  kind  of  overture  to  the  musical  Emer 
son,  if  there  be  such.  He  has  himself  dated  them 
as  written  while  he  kept  "school  in  Boston,"  but 
had  taken  flight  from  the  city,  and  was  living  in 
a  rural  suburb  called  Canterbury.  He  acknowl 
edged  in  them  his  juvenile  melancholy,  but  is 
silent  as  to  its  cause : 

Good-bye,  proud  world  !     I  'm  going  home  ! 
Thou  art  not  my  friend  and  I'm  not  thine.   .   .   . 
Long  have  I  -been  tossed  like  the  driven  foam  : 
But  now  proud  world!    I'm  going  home. 

What  tossed  him  so  stormily  in  that  peaceful 
girls  '-school,  the  reader  queries.  But  such  is  his 
present  attitude  toward  the  world  in  general,  and 
specially  toward  that  cloistered  abode,  which  con 
tained  a  number  of  the  well-conditioned  young 


54        RALPH  WA'jDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

ladies  of  the  city,  who  strangely  have  inspired 
their  youthful  teacher  with  this  awful  fit  of  dis 
gust  at  all  mankind.  The  brief  poem,  however, 
has  a  universal  worth  as  Emerson's  preluding 
challenge  to  society,  and  forecasts  the  man  who 
about  a  dozen  years  later  will  erect  his  fortress 
of  world-defiance  at  Concord  where  he,  taking  his 
Walden  ramble,  "in  the  bush  with  God  may 
meet." 

Moreover  Emerson  was  probably  not  the  com 
plete  teacher.  In  school-work  he  compares  him 
self  with  his  brother  Edward,  whose  "mind  was 
method,  his  constitution  was  order,  and  the  tap 
of  his  pencil  could  easily  enforce  silence  and  at 
tention.  I  confess  to  an  utter  want  of  this  same 
virtue."  Not  wholly  unjust  self-disparagement 
is  this;  Emerson  by  nature  could  not  drill,  but 
would  stimulate  the  pupil,  who  thus  was  likely  to 
fall  short  in  examination.  Already  when  he  was 
tutoring  in  his  Freshman  year,  the  President  of 
Harvard  relieved  him,  evidently  because  he  talked 
too  much  poetry  and  too  little  paradigm.  Repeti 
tion  and  routine,  very  needful  for  the  average 
learner,  were  his  horror,  and  he  would  spring  to 
spontaneity  and  immediate  overflow,  also  impor 
tant  for  the  class-room.  Thus  Emerson  was  but 
half  of  a  teacher,  doubtless  the  better  half.  The 
part  of  the  drill-sergeant  was  left  out,  whose 
"duties  were  never  congenial  to  my  disposition." 
Hence  he  pathetically  exclaims-  "I  am  a  hope 
less  schoolmaster. ' ' 


THE  SCHOOLMASTER  EMERSON.  55 

Yet  the  strange  fact  recurs  often  that  Emerson 
longed  to  be  a  teacher  of  the  higher  order,  prefer 
ring  this  to  any  other  vocation.  And  teach  what 
specialty,  think  ye?  Not  philosophy,  not  poetry 
directly;  Emerson's  supreme  ambition  was  to  be 
Professor  of  Rhetoric  at  Harvard.  Oratory  was 
his  first  love  in  the  practical,  and  when  that  could 
not  be,  in  the  pedagogical,  domain,  and  this  de 
sire  for  a  Professorship  seems  to  have  persisted 
quite  to  the  end  of  his  career.  He  said  late  in 
life  that  there  never  was  a  time  in  which  he  would 
not  have  accepted  a  chair '  of  rhetoric  at  Cam 
bridge.  Speech-making  Daniel  Webster  towered 
up  before  him  the  grand  oratorical  demigod,  quite 
as  this  statesman  did  to  the  rapt  vision  of  Carlyle, 
who,  imaging  him  as  the  statuesque  Parliamen 
tary  Hercules,  has  hewn  out  his  mountainous  fea 
tures  in  craggy  but  memorable  outlines  (see  one 
of  Carlyle 's  letters  to  Emerson,  I,  p.  260.)  Next 
to  "Webster  followed  Edward  Everett  in  Emer 
son's  admiration  of  the  ideal  speaker.  But  Nature 
denied  to  Emerson's  word-organ  the  primal 
thunder  of  the  transcendent  orator,  as  it  denied 
to  him  the  ultimate  native  energy  and  construc 
tive  power  of  the  poet.  Still  he  made  verses  and 
spoke  orations  to  the  last,  which  have  not  failed 
to  assert  their  place  in  the  World's  Literature. 
On  the  whole,  the  younger  Emerson  seemed  to 
take  Webster's  form  and  utterance  as  the  incar 
nation  of  the  loftiest  human  presence.  Time 
slowly  disillusioned  the  youthful  idealist,  and  at 


56         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

last  turned  him  to  an  opposite  excess  of  deprecia 
tion. 

Thus  our  verdant  graduate,  girl-shy  Waldo 
Emerson,  faced  quite  a  new  experience  of  life, 
his  own  as  well  as  that  of  others,  and  took  up  the 
same  into  himself  during  these  years.  Women  he 
had  known  chiefly  in  his  mother  and  Aunt  Mary, 
both  over  him  in  age  and  authority.  But  now  he, 
the  bashful  young  fellow,  seated  upon  his  chair 
of  commanding  perch,  gets  to  see  gay  young  fem 
ininity  in  a  very  testing  way  for  him  and  them. 
This  knowledge  of  Eve 's  Paradise  will  trace  itself 
fitfully  and  secretively  in  his  writ  and  in  his  ac 
tion.  But  'the  trial  has  ended;  schoolmastering 
was  but  a  makeshift  in  his  case  as  in  that  of  his 
father  and  grandfather,  both  of  whom  taught  on 
their  way  to  the  ministry.  Emerson  herein  has 
followed  the  ancestral  example;  and  now  he  is 
ready  to  take  the  next  step,  still  keeping  to  the 
old  highway. 

Well  may  he  be  thankful  as  he  crosses  over  the 
bound  of  his  twenty-second  year;  from  the  door 
step  of  home  he  has  driven  the  ever-present  wolf 
so  long  snapping  its  hungry  jaws  at  him  and  his 
dear  ones  even  round  the  dinner  table.  But  dis 
ease  still  lurks  in  his  bodily  frame ;  a  sense  of 
personal  evanishment  haunts  and  probably  colors 
his  spirit  permanently.  It  is  certain  that  a  strain 
of  physical  insufficency  runs  through  his  present 
writing,  as  if  he  forefelt  that  existence  with  him 
was  already  on  the  ebb.  And  now  follows  a  spell 


TV/A;  ]TJNER.\XT  EMERSON.  57 

of  wandering  spatially  and  spiritually,  during 
which  he  appears  to  be  dissolving  into  his  ele- 
.ments — a  time  of  will-less  vagrancy,  which  at 
least  has  its  training  in  letting  him  experience 
quite  fully  the  perilous  state  from  which  he  must 
recover  himself,  not  only  now  but  forever. 

VI 

THE  ITINERANT  EMERSON 

Still  another  and  a  new  quadrennial  course 
(1825-1829)  of  discipline  in  life's  university  must 
next  be  outlined  in  Emerson's  biography.  This 
phase  of  him  we  might  designate  as  his  spell  of 
vagabondage,  outer  and  inner;  a  kind  of  drifting 
adversity  it  is  which  he  has  to  endure  and  to  over 
come  in  order  to  reach  his  permanent  fastness. 

Thus  the  most  straggling,  broken,  shredded 
portion  of  Emerson's  career  was  strewn  up  and 
dowoi  the  next  four  years.  He  had  just  passed 
through  a  steady,  rather  monotonous  quadren- 
nium,  for  his  school  anchored  him  practically  to 
one  spot  and  to  regular  duties,  as  well  as  to  a 
continuous  flow  of  human  experience.  But  now 
the  taut  line  seems  to  snap,  and  he  begins  to  drift, 
the  sport  of  fortune  and  of  caprice.  It  is  true  that 
one  purpose  threads  waveringly  this  entire  time : 
he  was  preparing  for  his  ancestral  vocation 
though  not  without  some  throbs  of  hesitancy. 
Early  in  1825  he  entered  the  Divinity  School  at 
Cambridge.  lie  records:  "I  £o  to  my  College 


58         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

chamber  to-morrow  (February  9,  1825)  a  little 
better  or  worse  since  I  left  it  in  1821."  He  looks 
back  over  his  pedagogical  intervals  rather  down- 
heartedly,  reproaching  himself  for  the  samll  re 
sult,  especially  for  "my  cardinal  vice  of  intellec 
tual  dissipation."  Still  the  schoolmaster  has 
learned  more  than  any  of  his  pupils,  being  the 
most  capable  one  (as  time  has  shown)  of  the  en 
tire  lot.  But  within  a  month  ill-luck  began  to 
hound  him,  his  health  broke  down,  especially  his 
eyes  weakened  so  that  he  had  to  quit  his  studies 
and  do  hard  work  out  of  doors  on  his  uncle's 
farm.  Then  he  tutored  for  a  while,  yet  soon 
found  Himself  a  peripatetic  schoolmaster  again 
drifting  rapidly  through  three  schools.  Where 
upon  he  quit  the  business,  but  only  escaped  into 
a  new  ailment,  rheumatism,  to  which  was  added 
the  menace  of  lung-disease.  Still  on  October  10, 
1826,  he  succeeded  in  getting  "approbrated  to 
preach,"  and  soon  thereafter  he  delivered  his  first 
sermon.  Now  he  has  reached  the  apex  of  his  fam 
ily's  tradition,  he  is  an  ordained  minister.  Of 
theological  lore  not  much  is  his;  he  said  after 
wards  if  he  had  been  examined,  the  license  would 
have  been  refused  him,  so  fragile  was  his  under 
pinning  of  scholarship.  But  in  the  eyes  of  that 
committee  of  Middlesex  ministers  to  whom  he  ap 
plied,  his  long  ministerial  ancestry  was  an  apos 
tolic  descent  irrefragable. 

But  just  on  this  sunlit  mountain  top  of  happy 
fortune  beerins  to  lower  the  dark  frown  of  fate ; 


THE  i:  IN E RANT  EMERSON.  59 

his  triple  malady  of  eyes,  joints  and  lungs  over 
whelm  him  completely,  and  he  is  compelled  to 
quit  the  stern  New  England  winter  for  a  softer 
climate.  Accordingly  he  sails  for  Charleston, 
South  Carolina,  and  reaches  that  city.  But  it  is 
still  too  chill  for  his  sensitive  frame,  and  so  he 
ships  again  for  the  more  southern  St.  Augustine, 
Florida,  in  which  old  Spanish  town  he  stays  till 
spring.  Then  he  sets  face  Northward;  passing 
through  Charleston  and  "Washington,  he  reaches 
home  in  June,  after  an  absence  of  a  little  more 
than  six  months. 

Emerson  has  left  some  pretty  full  notes  of  this 
journey.  It  is  strange  how  little  the  political 
trend  of  the  time  attracts  the  young  American 
of  twenty-three  years.  He  has  some  passing  ob 
servations  on  St.  Augustine,  but  the  deeper  histo 
ric  meaning  of  the  acquisition  of  Florida  he  did 
not  probe  for.  In  the  midst  of  new  semi-tropical 
scenery  and  a  strange  society,  he  chiefly  occupied 
himself  with  his  own  internal  problems,  throwing 
off.  some  snatches  of  verse  by  the  way.  At  Charles 
ton  he  does  not  seem  to  have  felt  the  rising  tide 
towards  secession  in  South  Carolina,  Already  it 
was  more  pronounced  there  in  1827,  than  any 
where  else  in  the  United  States  (with  the  possible 
exception  of  his  own  section),  and  it  became 
married  with  slavery  especially  through  the  Mis 
souri  Compromise  of  1820.  Perhaps  Emerson  did 
not  feel  disunion  strongly,  since  he  during  his  boy 
hood  had  heard  it  often  threatened  in  his  own 


60         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON — PART  FIRST. 

New  England,  where  the  war  of  1812  and  the  em 
bargo  were  very  unpopular.  But  through  the  per 
suasive  eloquence  of  the  new  protective  tariff,  she 
banished  the  doctrine  of  secession,  which  thence 
migrated  to  the  South  in  which  it  took  up  its 
permanent  abode,  till  slain  by  the  Civil  War. 
Quite  isolated'he  goes  his  Avay;-he  seems  to  have 
found  only  one  man  for  deeper  converse,  Achille 
Murat,  nephew  of  the  great  Napoleon  and  son  of 
one  of  his  Marshals,  now  a  planter  in  Florida. 
And  not  a  woman,  no  love !  So  he  exclaims  in  his 
Journal:  "Wo  is  me!  I  pass  in  cold  selfishness 
from  Maine  to  Florida,  and  tremble  less  I  be 
destined  to  be  a  monk."  It  would  seem,  then, 
that  Emerson  was  already  considering  his  life  of 
celibacy  with  a  sort  of  terror,  and  resolving  to  quit 
it  on  the  first  good  chance,  which,  we  may  prem 
ise,  will  in  time  drop  on  his"  path,  and  bring  to  an 
end  this  misery  of  solitary  vagabondage. 

Emerson,  however,  kept  up  his  migratory  habit 
after  his  return  home ;  he  refused  to  settle  down 
in  one  spot,  but  scattered  his  sermons  through 
various  towns  not  too  far  from  Boston.  Some 
times  his  excuse  was  his  weak  lungs,  but  again 
he  would  write :  "I  have  lost  all  sense  of  the 
mouse  in  my  chest,  am  at  ease. ' '  But  he  could  not 
yet  bring  himself  to  accept  a  fixed  place:  "I 
have  just  refused  an  invitation  to  preach  as  can 
didate  at  Brighton.  It  is  the  third  No  to  which 
I  have  treated  the  Church  applicant  or  vacant." 
He  could  not  renounce  his  preaching  itinerancy, 


THE  ITTXERAXT   KMER8O\.  fi} 

as  if  his  ideal  were  the  oJd  Methodist  circuit-rider. 
He  records  in  his  Journal  (July  10,  1828)  "It  is 
a  peculiarity  of  humor  in  me,  my  strong  propen 
sity  for  strolling."  Delightful  is  his  "feeling  of 
freedom  from  any  anchorage  in  space  and  time, 
and,  too,  in  spirit.  What  is  to  become  of  the 
shoreless  drifter,  the  centrifugal  scatterling? 

So  he  seems  to  have  pushed  on  to  the  extreme 
point  of  his  wayward  vagabondism.  But  destiny 
has  him  in  hand,  and  one  of  his  preaching  excur 
sions  carries  him  to  Concord,  New  Hampshire 
(New  Concord),  where  he  beholds  a  youthful 
maiden  of  radiant  form  whose  glance  seems  to 
have  given  a  strong  shock  to  his  unsettled  nature, 
from  whose  bewitching  memory  he  cannot  so 
easily  recover.  At  any  rate  we  find  that  he  is 
again  going  to  that  same  Concord  with  the  pur 
pose  of  sermonizing  for  three  Sundays  in  succes 
sion — a  long  stay  for  him  in  one  place.  But  what 
turn  his  most  effective  discourse  has  taken  may  be 
inferred  from  the  following  letter  dated  Decem 
ber  24,  1828:  "I  have  the  happiness  to  inform 
you  that  I  have  been  now  for  one  week  engaged 
to  Ellen  Louisa  Tucker  who  is  the  fairest  and 
best  of  her  kind.  .  .  seventeen  years  old,  and 
very  beautiful  by  universal  consent."  And  the 
next  thing  we  hear  is  that  the  ever-flitting  min 
ister  is  getting  ready  to  settle  down  to  a  steady 
charge,  and  stands  gazing  into  the  last  sunset  of 
his  itinerant  bachelorhood. 

Thus  his  uncertain   ministerial   wandering  has 


62         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

concluded.  Moreover  he  has  passed  through  his 
long  preparatory  training,  through  school,  col 
lege,  church  seminary,  till  now  he  has  landed  in 
his  traditional  vocation,  with  an  outlook  upon 
its  prescribed  course  lasting  the  rest  of  his  life. 

Still  we  must  not  forget  the  secret  protest,  the 
countercurrent  opposite  to  the  surface  stream. 
The  intimacies  of  his  Journal  have  often  pro 
claimed  his  independence  of  tradition.  "I  love 
to  be  my  own  master  when  my  spirits  are  prompt ' ' 
— Then  he  cannot  follow  in  the  old  routine. 
And  hear  this  sigh:  "If  I  were  richer,  I  should 
lead  a  better  life  than  I  do ; "  that  is,  he  would 
somehow  break  loose.  He  longs  for  money,  not 
for  what  it  is  but  for  what  it  buys.  "The  chief 
advantage  I  should  propose  myself  in  wealth 
would  be  the  independence  of  manner  and  con 
versation  it  would  bestow,  and  which  I  eagerly 
covet"  (Journal,  July  10,  1828).  Economic  in 
dependence  is  his  heart's  desire  that  thereby  he 
win  his  spirit's  liberty.  Shrewd  Yankee  that 
he  is,  he  has  his  eye  upon  a  comfortable  hoard  of 
cash,  not  as  end  but  as  means. 

Here  we  conclude  the  First  Epoch  of  Emerson's 
Life-Essay — that  prolonged  stretch  of  time 
which  we  have  called  his  Traditional  Schooling 
— the  sown  seedfield  which  is  to  grow  and  bear 
its  crop  in  the  future.  The  germs  of  the  coming 
man  we  have  sought  to  trace— hereafter  some 
of  them  to  ripen,  but  some  of  them  to  lie  dor 
mant,  remaining  mere  unfulfilled  aspirations. 


THE  ITINERANT  EJMER8O&  63 

Through  all  the  turns  of  this  Epoch  can  be 
heard  the  one  dominant  key-note :  the  struggle 
to  appropriate  the  environing  world  of  pre 
scription  in  character,  in  learning,  and  in  voca 
tion.  His  educational  and  professional  novitiate 
he  has  passed,  not  without  inner  protest,  let  it 
be  added  for  the  sake  of  what  is  preparing. 

In  this  place  we  should  not  forget  to  mention 
that  the  future  great  writer  has  begun  to  write 
small — to  give  wee  prophetic  gleams  of  his  chief 
impending  evolution.  Deeper  than  his  minister- 
ship  starts  to  throb  his  mightier  call,  his  master 
ship  in  writ.  The  three  primordial  rudiments  of 
his  literary  fulfillment  are  already  astir  and 
show  their  first  push  for  utterance.  He  breaks 
forth  into  verse,  he  writes  letters,  and  starts  to 
keep  a  Journal  which,  as  now  printed  begins 
with  the  year  1820,  though  "it  had  predeces 
sors"  which  are  at  present  lost,  as  we  are  told 
by  its  editors.  Thus  we  may  behold  the  micro 
scopic  atoms,  or  better,  the  original  cells  of  Em 
erson  the  scribe  in  three  quite  distinct  forms — 
the  poetical,  the  epistolary,  and  the  diarial.  All 
three  shapes,  minute,  separate,  but  elemental, 
keep  bubbling  up  to  the  surface  from  his  deep 
est  underself  till  the  cessation  of  his  creative 
power.  In  this  First  Epoch  they  are  tinged  with 
its  character  of  tradition  and  imitation;  he  has 
to  learn  to  handle  the  weapons  of  his  pencraft 
before  attaining  his  own  distinctive  expression. 
From  this  point  of  view  it  may  be  said  that  the 


$4        RALPH  WALDO  BJIBR80N—PART  FTRST. 

spiritually  molecular  Emerson,  his  Genius  in  its 
protoplasmic  formation,  is  better  documented 
than  any  other  great  author,  not  excepting 
Goethe.  And  it  would  seem  that  all  the  Emer 
sonian  Archives  are  not  yet  in  print. 

Taking  one  more  retrospect  of  this  First  Epoch, 
the  last  one  for  the  present,  we  may  look  at  it 
as  a  kind  of  Chinese  wall  of  prescription  which 
the  aspiring  youth  has  to  build  in  and  around 
his  spirit,  and  then  to  surmount,  leaving  it  be 
hind  as  material  transcended  though  ever  pres 
ent.  From  appropriation  he  is  to  rise  to  crea 
tion,  re-making  his  own  pre-suppositions,  break 
ing  with  his  own  foregoneness.  Thus  we  see  that 
Emerson  at  his  pastoral  ordination  faces  a  new 
turn  of  an  Epoch  with  its  new  problem  running 
thus :  which  is  to  be  master  of  this  pulpit,  I  or 
Tradition?  Am  I  to  prescribe  to  Prescription, 
or  is  Prescription  to  prescribe  to  me?  Mounting 
to  the  sacred  desk,  he  opens  the  battle  which 
soon  passes  from  within  to  without. 


CHAPTER  SECOND 

THE  EXPLOSION 

Not  too  emphatic  seems  this  titular  word  to  des 
ignate  the  next  Epoch  of  Emerson's  life:  the 
Explosion.  He  was  established  in  the  vocation 
to  which  during  all  the  long  time  of  toil  and  pov 
erty  he  had  looked  forward  as  his  chief  goal — a 
vocation  which  appeared  his  not  only  by  per 
sonal  choice  but  by  hereditary  transmission.  No 
longer  a  piece  of  driftwood  he  floated  down  the 
years;  but  firmly  moored  in  one  haven  with  its 
fixed  round  of  duties,  he  might  well  cast  a 
peaceful  outlook  upon  the  future.  But  it  would 
seem  that  this  stability  was  holding  down  the 
volcano  within,  condensing  the  fires  which  were 
at  last  to  break  forth  into  an  epochal  eruption. 
It  looks  as  if  his  long  and  rather  tristful  wan 
dering  till  he  was  twenty-six  years  old  had  been 
a  safety-valve  which  allowed  his  hidden  protests 
to  blow  off  with  little  noise  and  no  serious  danger. 

Significant  of  this  Epoch  in  its  brevity,  since 
it  lasts  only  a  little  more  than  three  years  (1829- 
1832),  and  culminates  in  the  decisive  and  sur 
prisingly  sudden  outburst  which  lands  him  over 
the  border  into  a  new  stage.  It  thus  stands  in 
emphatic  contrast  to  the  preceding  Epoch  both 
in  duration  and  character.  It  marks  time  with 

65 


56         RALPH  WALDO  EMKI?$OX—PART  FIRST. 

a  thunder-clap,  and  breaks  loose  from  the  long 
ministerial  tradition,  defying  the  prescribed  fam 
ily  succession  for  six  generations.  To  be  sure, 
Emerson,  as  usual,  showed  few  outer  signs  of 
violence  in  word  or  deed;  he  maintained  his 
placid,  stormless  behavior,  uiiwrathful  and  un- 
vengeful.  Still  the  earthquake  shook  him  spir 
itually  to  the  center  of  his  being,  and  turned  the 
stream  of  life  into  a  new  direction.  Hence  it 
was  for  him  a  grand  act  of  separation,  or  at  least 
the  starting-point  thereof — his  first  deliverance 
from  the  chilling  hoar-frost  of  aged  prescription. 

Still  we  must  not  forget  that  Emerson  during 
the  greater  part  of  this  triennium,  remained 
quiescent,  fulfilling  its  prescribed  duties,  though 
slowly  evolving  and  at  times  rumbling  inwardly. 
He  was  fastened  to  his  stake  at  the  start,  and 
only  strayed  within  the  length  of  his  tether. 
Then  he  soon  became  tied  even  more  firmly  to 
another  institution,  the  Family,  through  his  mar 
riage  with  Miss  Tucker,  though  this  bond  was 
soon  cleft  by  death.  Thus  the  settled  fixity  of 
his  environment  continued  to  tighten  about  him 
for  a  couple  of  years  till  he  felt  ready  to  start 
the  break  for  freedom.  But  when  his  new- 
formed  tie  of  love  had  been  shivered  by  a  strong 
er  hand  than  his  own,  he  became  more  deeply 
moved  to  grapple  with  the  transmitted  fetters  of 
his  church. 

We  may  note  that  this  spontaneous   overflow 
of  a  new  idea  and  purpose  into  Emerson's  soul 


THE  EXPLOSION.  67 

has  its  analogy  to  his  fundamental  doctrine,  as 
he  uttered  it  in  many  turns  during  his  whole  life. 
The  present  vibrant  eruption  becoming  resistless 
in  outpour,  testifies  its  resemblance  to  the  divine 
effluence  which  darted  forth  immediately  from 
God  and  swept  away  all  traditional  landmarks 
from  the  spirit  receiving  its  evangel.  Such  was 
now  his  coercive  experience,  which  for  him  re 
mained  typical  ever  afterward.  It  illustrates  the 
function  of  the  Emersonian  Oversoul  streaming 
from  upper  unknown  sources  down  into  the  in 
dividual  soul  and  there  inscribing  its  message. 

Of  the  present  Explosion  we  have  already  re 
marked  low  mutterings  in  Emerson's  youth,  pre 
monitory,  prophetic  of  what  is  coming.  And  here 
after  we  shall  find  many  reverberations  of  this 
early  spiritual  shock  echoing  through  his  words 
spoken  and  written  till  old-age  falters  his  voice. 
"We  should  carefully  note  the  recorded  experi 
ences  of  such  an  epochal  overturn  as  the  deepest 
heart-searching  confessions  of  Emerson  the  auto- 
biographer. 

First  is  to  be  emphasized  that  the  present  breach 
has  its  source  in  religion,  and  continues  to  show 
itself  religious  as  to  feeling  and  garb.  His  pro 
test  against  tradition  is  still  traditional,  being 
uttered  by  the  traditional  sermon.  He  preached 
against  the  transmitted  content  of  preaching, 
after  the  transmitted  form  of  the  preacher.  At 
present  he  is  not  able  to  create  a  new  literary  ex 
pression  responsive  to  his  subject-matter.  That 


68         RALPH  WALDO  EMKR8OX—PART  FIRST. 

will  come  later  after  a  fuller  and  deeper  experi 
ence,  culminant  especially  in  the  Essay,  of  which 
both  manner  and  content  are  defiant  of  the  ac 
cepted  way  of  writing,  being  wont-breaking  in 
form  as  well  as  duly  anti-prescriptive.  This  is 
the  seal  of  the  author's  originality,  which  does 
not  fully  ripen  till  the  Second  Period,  hereafter 
to  be  unfolded.  Moreover  the  religious  protest 
of  the  present  Epoch  is  to  widen  out  over  many 
spiritual  fields  such  as  art,  institutions,  and 
specially  literature.  The  religious  breach  is  cen 
tral  in  Emerson,  as  becomes  the  scion  of  the 
theocratic  Puritan,  and  from  the  center  spreads 
forth  towards  universality. 

Such,  then,  is  the  purport  and  limit  of  this 
Second  Epoch,  still  traditional  in  its  declared 
war  upon  tradition,  and  thus  belonging  to  Em 
erson's  First  Period,  since  it  unfolds  a  fresh 
stage  in  the  total  sweep  of  his  Traditional 
Schooling.  A  mighty  convulsion  of  spirit,  it  is 
but  half  done  as  yet.  The  first  transformation, 
that  of  fact,  is  now  wrought;  the  second  trans 
formation,  that  of  expression  is  to  come,  resulting 
from  a  still  larger  experience. 

I. 

PASTOR  EMERSON 

It  is  recorded  that  on  the  llth  of  March,  1829, 
our  peripatetic  schoolmaster  and  student  of  the 
ology  brought  his  long  novitiate  of  studying  and 


PASTOR  EMERSON.  59 

teaching  and  wandering  to  a  close,  and  was  or 
dained  as  colleague  of  the  Reverend  Henry 
Ware,  minister  of  the  Second  Church  (Unitarian) 
in  Boston.  This  would  seem  to  be  the  most 
deeply  traditional  act  of  his  life,  voluntary  too ; 
he  drops  into  the  ancestral  line  of  Puritan  clergy 
men,  descended  from  hoary  Peter  Bulkley,  and 
hovering  about  one  spot  since  their  first  advent 
on  American  soil.  Surely  the  young  pastor  may 
well  deem  himself  now  anchored  safely  in  the 
old  harbor.  The  forelock  of  duty  is  apparently 
one  with  the  backlook  of  tradition :  he  will  lead 
the  level  unambitious  life  of  the  cleric,  accepta 
bly  moving  in  the  ever-recurrent  routine  of 
preaching,  praying,  visiting  the  sick,  burying  the 
dead,  and  otherwise  performing  the  transmitted 
rites  of  his  church.  He  has,  at  least  on  the  out 
side,  found  his  calling,  attained  his  goal.  Also 
material  abundance  has  banned  his  former 
penury.  He  writes  to  his  Aunt  Mary :  ' '  You 
know — in  poverty  and  many  troubles  the  seeds 
of  our  prosperity  were  sown.  Now  all  these 
troubles  appeared  a  fair  counterbalance  to  the 
flatteries  of  fortune."  No  more  hunger,  plenty 
of  clothes  and  good  too ;  let  the  Giver  be  praised. 
Still  Emerson  has  his  strange  foreboding 
which  he  cannot  quite  put  down.  His  luck  makes 
him  glimpse  the  Goddess  Nemesis,  who  of  old 
''kept  watch  to  overthrow  the  high,"  and  leveled 
them  earthward.  Nor  is  he  quite  in  tune  with 
the  prescribed  limits  of  his  profession:  "Our 
usage  of  preaching  is  too  straitened — it  walks  in 


70         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

a  narrow  round,  it  harps  on  a  few  and  ancient 
strings,  it  holds  en  to  phrases  when  the  lapse  of 
time  has  changed  their  meaning."  All  of  which 
would  hint  a  reform  if  not  a  revolution  meditated 
by  him  in  the  establishd  order  of  sermonizing. 
He  intends  at  the  start  to  be  rid  of  the  old  sanc 
timonious  style  and  the  scriptural  speech  of  good 
venerable  Ecclesiasticus.  Even  in  the  pulpit  he 
threatens  to  employ  for  illustration  "the  facts  of 
this  age,  the  printing  press  and  the  loom,  the 
phenomena  of  steam  and  gas"  alongside  of  the 
ancient  Hebrew  environment,  and  even  not 
wholly  to  eschew  our  "free  institutions"  in  favor 
of  the  Mosaic  theocracy,  so  dear  to  the  older 
Puritanic  consciousness,  And  there  is  abound 
ing  evidence  that  he  put  far  more  stress  upon 
the  efficacy  of  the  moral  sentiment  than  he  did 
upon  ceremonial  and  dogma,  and  showed  more 
faith  in  direct  personal  inspiration  than  in  that 
of  the  Scriptures.  Really,  however,  he  is  the 
true  outcome  of  Puritanism,  whose  general  move 
ment  has  been  toward  minimizing  if  not  quite 
eliminating  the  act  of  divine  mediation  from  the 
Christ. 

Emerson  was  at  first  ordained  as  the  colleague 
to  the  regular  pastor,  who,  being  taken  ill,  soon 
resigned,  when  his  young  associate  became  the 
sole  incumbent  after  a  few  weeks.  It  is  told  how 
he  helped  local  charities  of  all  sorts,  and  favored 
the  good  works  of  other  denominations.  But 
there  is  evidence  that  he  must  have  put  the  main 


PASTOR  EMERSON.  71 

stress  of  his  mind  as  well  as  spent  his  best 
moments  upon  the  written  word,  which  was  also 
spoken  from  the  pulpit,  and  so  took  the  form  of 
the  sermon.  May  we  not  see  herein  Emerson  the 
writer  working  through  a  stage  of  his  Appren 
ticeship  ?  Such  would  seem  to  have  been  his  own 
opinion  of  it  as  he  looked  backward. 

"We  learn  that  one  hundred  and  seventy-one  of 
his  sermons  still  lie  in  manuscript,  "and  he  ex 
pressed  his  desire  that  they  should  so  remain," 
says  Mr.  Cabot,  his  trusted  literary  adviser  and 
biographer,  who  evidently  was  so  generous  of 
patience  and  other  faculty  as  to  read  this  por 
tentous  mass  of  theology  condemned,  but  not 
burned  by  its  author.  The  total  will  average 
about  one  written  discourse  a  week  during  the 
entire  pastorate  of  Emerson,  a  large  output  even 
in  its  mechanical  labor  for  a  man  frail  physically 
and  infirm  of  health,  even  if  it  contains  also  the 
gathered  stores  of  his  previous  preaching.  Be 
sides  those  above  mentioned,  only  two  of  Emer 
son's  sermons  have  been  printed,  of  which  one  is 
found  in  hjs  Collected  "Works,  unless  some  have 
been  dragged  from  their  grave  in  recent  years. 
Evidently  the  author  himself  did  not  esteem  them 
characteristic  of  his  best.  So  many  discourses 
could  hardly  have  been  composed  in  the  full 
overflow  of  genius  which  always  chooses  its  time 
and  levies  its  tax.  Largely  they  must  have  been 
scribbled  off  in  a  mechanical  way  from  remem 
bered  doctrine  and  from  Aunt  Mary's  theolog- 


72          RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON — PART  FIRST. 

ical  disquisitions.  Mr.  Cabot  affirms  of  them  that 
"in  general  all  is  within  the  conventions  of  the 
Unitarian  pulpit,"  and  more  surprising  is  his 
dictum,  that  they  "are  presented  in  scriptural 
language,  as  if  they  belonged  to  the  body  of  ac 
cepted  doctrine."  Emerson,  however,  seems  to 
hint  something  different  when  he  apologizes  for 
"their  want  of  sanctity  in  style,"  and  in  par 
ticular  he  reprobates  "this  straining  to  say  what 
is  unutterable,  and  vain  retching  with  the  imbe 
cile  use  of  great  words,"  all  of  which  "is  nause 
ous  to  sound  sense  and  good  taste."  Already 
Emerson  was  a  classicist  in  his  literary  bent,  and 
at  present  would  seem  to  be  the  last  man  to  take 
any  liking  for  Carlylese.  If  we  consider  his  for 
bears  and  his  surroundings,  the  chief  miracle  is 
:-that  he  succeeded  so  completely  in  erasing  the 
Hebraic  grain  from  his  writings  which  appeared 
later  than  the  time  of  these  sermons. 
'Still  under  this  equable,  doubtless  lukewarm 
AQW  of  outer  conformity,  the  spirit  was  getting 
hot,  yea  had  begun  to  boil.  For  listen  to  his 
Journal:  "I  hate  goodness  that  preaches — good 
ness  that  preaches  undoes  itself.  Goodies  make 
.us.. very  bad.  "We  will  almost  sin  to  spite  them." 
;"Such: speech  sparkles  scintillant  of  some  personal 
"friction;_with  pietistic  .tradition.  Then  it  reaches 
the  point  of  downright  defiance  in  the  assertion: 
"I  have  sometimes  thought  that  in  order  to  be  a 
good  minister,  it  was  necessary  to  leave  the  min 
istry.  The  profession  is  antiqrated.  In  an  al- 


MARRIAGE.  73 

tered  age  we  worship  in  the  dead  forms  of  our 
forefathers."  Truly  the  ancestral  fetters  are 
chafing  our  pastor  to  the  quick  even  in  that  very 
mild  Unitarian  prison,  nearly  but  not  yet  quite 
untrammeled  of  creed  and  ritual.  What  is  he 
going  to  do  about  it? 

But  before  we  can  regard  him  at  the  final  turn 
of  this  problem,  we  have  to  contemplate  him  held 
fast  in  another  bond,  the  deepest  and  the  strong 
est  during  his  earlier  pastorate,  out  of  which 
bond  Providence  delivers  him  while  smiting  him 
to  the  heart  in  an  agony  of  release.  We  allude 
to  his  first  marriage,  whence  sprang  circum 
stances  which  took  a  very  formative  part  in 
shaping  his  coming  career. 

II. 

MARRIAGE 

The  more  inquisitive,  open-eyed  reader  may 
have  observed  in  scanning  Emerson's  Diary,  that 
the  young  minister  chanced  to  visit  Concord,  New 
Hampshire,  December  1827,  on  one  of  his  preach 
ing  peregrinations.  There  it  was  his  good  luck 
to  look  into  the  love-glinting  eyes  of  a :  young 
lady,  seeing  her  for  the  first  time  with  a.  result 
destined  to  bear  memorable  fruit.  At  the  start 
he  evidently  tried  to  hold  aloof  in  accord  with 
his  doctrinal  bachelorhood;  still  after  a  year's 
delay  he  went  back  to  the  same  place,  having  a 
good  excuse,  nay  having  two  or  three  good  ex 
cuses  for  his  return,  but  one  best  of  all.  He 


74         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

wished  to  sermonize  again  in  that  appreciative 
locality  "for  three  Sundays,"  and  at  the  same 
time  to  give  his  convalescent  brother  a  little  out 
ing.  Still  the  real  but  then  unspoken  motive  is 
probably  unbosomed  in  the  following  extract 
from  a  letter  which  was  written  after  the  deed 
was  done,  and  the  joyful  heart  could  no  longer 
hide  the  clamoring  secret.  Date  is  December  21, 
1828. 

"I  have  now  been  engaged  four  days  to  Ellen 
Louisa  Tucker,  a  young  lady,  who,  if  you  will 
trust  me,  is  the  fairest  and  best  of  her  kind.  She 
is  the  youngest  daughter  of  the  late  Beza  Tucker, 
a  merchant  of  Boston,"  who  has  left  to  this 
daughter,  it  may  here  be  whispered  in  confidence, 
a  considerable  inheritance,  which  by  the  way  is 
to  perform  a  very  substantial  part  in  this  Em 
ersonian  Life-Essay.  The  mother  was  then  liv 
ing  at  Concord  with  the  second  husband.  But 
harken  to  the  new  confession  of  the  lover:  "It 
is  now  just  a  year  since  I  became  acquainted 
with  Ellen.  .  .  .  but  I  thought  I  had  got  over 
my  blushes  and  my  wishes  when  now  I  deter 
mined  to  go  into  that  dangerous  neighborhood 
on  Edward's  account."  So  young  Waldo  claims, 
dancing  before  his  fancy  a  brotherly  pretext,  and 
then  he  bashfully  drops  the  first  person  of  his 
story:  "But  the  presumptuous  man  was  over 
thrown  by  the  eye  and  ear,  and  surrendered  at 
discretion.  He  is  now  as  happy  as  it  is  safe  in 
life  to  be.  She  is  seventeen  years  old,  and  very 


MARRIAGE.  75 

beautiful  by  universal  consent,"  with  which 
popular  judgment  he  in  the  present  instance 
)oisterously  coincides  to  the  dot. 

But  Emerson  was  still  a  wanderer  without  a 
fixed  charge.  He  had  been  offered  a  steady  po 
sition,  yet  he  hovered  in  doubt,  till  a  right  turn 
of  the  tide  might  float  him  into  port.  His  be 
trothal  seems  to  have  settled  him,  for  we  read 
that  some  three  months  after  his  engagement,  he 
received  the  ordination  already  mentiond  in  the 
preceding  section.  Six  months  later  he  was  mar 
ried  and  brought  his  wife  to  Boston,  establishing 
a  home  for  himself  and  for  his  mother's  family, 
the  members  of  which  were  still  in  a  very  dis 
persed  and  distressed  condition  both  as  to  health 
and  finance.  It  is  evident  that  the  newly  wedded 
young  minister  has  won  a  fresh  outlook  upon  the 
future ;  the  economic  cloud  which  kept  lowering 
over  him  all  his  days,  has  begun  to  break  away 
into  a  golden  luminority. 

Of  Emerson's  love-life  there  is  not  much  rec 
ord.  It  was  not  his  theme  except  in  a  very  lim 
ited  and  shrinking  way.  Though  he  it  was  who 
said  that  all  the  world  loves  a  lover,  he  was  him 
self  no  ardent  loyer.  of  love;  indeed  just  that 
character  was  what  he  shunned.  He  would,  be 
no  Phileros,  like  Goethe  and  many  another  poet. 
Therein  he  seems  to  have  been  true  to  the  Puri 
tanic  element  in  all  New  England  poetry,  which 
has  been  reproached  with  never  having  produced 
a  genuine  love-song.  This  is  doubtless  an  exces- 


76         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON — PART  FIRST. 

sive  statement,  still  it  hints  a  tendency  and  a  lim 
itation.  Unquestionably  Emerson  often  treats  of 
love,  but  it  is  apt  to  etherialize  into  his  ideal  re 
lation  to  the  divine  Oversoul.  His  love  of  God 
was  so  strong,  so  exclusive,  possibly  so  jealous, 
that  he 'had  only  a  limited  toleration  of  the  love 
of  woman. 

Still  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  humanly  ama 
tory  theme  is  wholly  absent  from  Emerson's 
writings.  In  certain  Essays  there  are  passages 
breathing  the  heart's  passionate  exuberances, 
though  disguised  and  made  impersonal  by  some 
abstract  setting  or  symbol.  Also  several  of  his 
lyrics  are  instinct  with  individual  emotion,  but 
his  tendency  is  to  dream  it  away  into  its  uni 
versal  counterpart.  In  some  lines  of  this  time 
he  implies  that  Miss  Tucker  was  his  first  love, 
that  he  as  teacher  passed  through  the  fiery  ordeal 
of  that  Boston  girls '-school  without  any  serious 
singeing : 

"Then  eagerly  I  searched  each  circle  round, 
I  panted  for  my  mate,  but  no  mate  found; 
I  saw  bright  eyes,  fair  forms,  complexions  fine, 
But  not  a  single  soul  that  spoke  to  mine; 
At  last  the  star  broke  through  the  hiding  cloud, 
At  last  I  found  thee  in  the  silken  crowd. 
I  found  thee,  Ellen—" 

Happy  man!  We  shall  have  to  take  the  poet 
izing  lover  at  his  word,  and  respond  with  a  fel 
low-feeling  to  his  ardent  imagery.  At  the  same 


MARRIAGE.  77 

time  we  must  note  the  abiding  significance  of  this 
matrimonial  step  throughout  his  whole  career, 
bringing  with  it  the  greatest  stroke  of  good-luck 
that  ever  befel  him  or  any  other  poor  penwright. 
For  she  is  an  heiress,  and  her  considerable  for 
tune  drops  or  will  drop  into  Emerson's  lap,  se 
curing  to  him  for  life  economic  freedom,  enfran 
chisement  from  the  hamstringing  worry  about  a 
livelihood,  the  freedom  which  bases  every  other- 
kind  of  freedom  not  only  of  speech  but  of  spirit. 
We  dare  question  if  foresightful  Emerson  had 
ventured  to  break*  the  galling  fetters  of  his  min 
isterial  vocation  (as  he  will  shortly  do)  unless  he 
had  felt  himself  financially  independent,  and  thus 
defiant  of  those  first  fates  of  human  existence- 
food,  raiment,  and  shelter. 

We  must  recall  that  actual  want,  even  gaunt 
hunger  threatened  Emerson  in  his  younger  days. 
All  through  his  novitiate,  as  heretofore  described, 
he  was  in  a  desperate  wrestle  with  poverty.  But 
now  the  windfall  descends  upon  him  by  gift  of 
the  Godsj  munificent  especially  when  tested  by  the 
Emerson  household.  Never  did  Providence  do  a 
better  deed,  divinely  benignant,  far-overlooking 
the  future.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the 
free,  the  great  Emerson  now  becomes  more  than  a 
possibility,  even  a  certainty,  with  time.  Often,  in 
the  course  of  our  narrative,  we  shall  have  to  take 
a  glance  back  at  this  lasting  foundation  of  his 
life's  temple. 

Pastor  Emerson,  henceforth  economically  inde- 


78         RALPH  WALD&-BM&R8ON—PART  FIRST. 

pendent,  has  set  his  face  toward  making  himself 
spiritually  independent,  whereof  the  first  decisive 
step  with  its  lasting  outlook  is  .next  to  be 
recorded. 

III. 

THE  BREAKING  POINT 

' '  The  soul  stands  alone  with  God,  and  Jesus  is  no 
more  present  to  your  mind  than  your  brother  or 
your  child. ' '  Many  passages  to  the  same  purport 
can  be  culled  from  Emerson ls  writings  during 
these  pivotal  years.  He  has  come  to  question  all 
forms  of  mediation  between  man  and  God,  between, 
the  soul  individual  and  the  soul  universal,  chal 
lenging  the  position  of  the  Mediator  himself  as 
centered  in  the  heart  of  Christianity.  The  his 
toric  Church  with  its  dogmas  and  rites  has  be 
come  to  him  a  spiritual  obstruction,  yea  an  offense 
which  he  deems  himself  called  upon  to  assail  and 
to  eradicate. 

Perhaps  if  Ave  had  access  to  the  mountainous 
mass  of  the  unpublished  sermons  of  his  clerical 
triennium,  we  would  find  this  neAV  protest  eA^er 
rising  higher,  increasing  in  strength  and  defining 
itself  with  greater  clearness  and  resolution.  His 
vocation  in  its  transmitted  form  is  continuously 
getting  to  be  more  distasteful  to  him,  and  indeed 
he  as  clergyman  has  undone  himself  by  his  doc 
trine.  His  Journal  breaks  out:  "When  people 
imagine  that  others  can  be  their  priests,  they  may 


THE   BREAKING  POINT.  79 

well  fear  hypocrisy."  What  then  becomes  of  the 
minister  Emerson?  He  is  certainly  not  far  from 
professional  suicide.  This  jotting  in  his  Diary  is 
dated  September  5th,  1832,  and  bears  in  it  a  se 
cret  tlirust  against  himself  as  the  shepherd  of  his 
nock.  He  is  not  far  from  calling  himself  a  hypo 
crite,  and  we  may  hear  the  preluding  resolve  to 
free  his  soul  from  such  a  stinging  stain  of  self- 
reproach. 

Accordingly  it  is  not  surprising  to  learn  that 
four  days  later  he  preached  his  last  ministerial 
sermon,  whose  theme  was  the  Lord's  Supper,  and 
enforced  kindly  but  decisively  his  scruples  about 
administering  that  rite.  He  states  his  belief  that 
it  was  not  a  permanent  institution,  but  a  form 
which,  had  been  outgrown,  and  had  become  alien 
to  the  Spirit  of  Christ  himself,  whose  true  exam 
ple  is  not  that  of  an  intermediary  between  me  and 
my  God,  but  that  of  an  immediate  communicant 
with  the  Divine  Spirit  quite  like  myself  and 
yourself.  Very  significant  is  this  not  only  of  Em 
erson's  present  religious  attitude,  but  of  his  uni 
versal  world-view  throughout  his  entire  life. 

Already  in  the  preceding  June  (1832)  he  had 
proposed  to  his  congregation  that  the  use  of  the 
elements  in  the  Lord's  Supper  be  dropped,  and 
also  that  the  rite  be  made  merely  one  of  com 
memoration,  and  not  regarded  as  a  sacrament  or 
dained  by  Christ  to  be  kept  up  by  his  Church  for 
all  time.  The  committee  to  whom  the  proposi 
tion  was  referred  reported  against  any  change, 


80         RALPH  WALDO  EMBR8ON—PART  FTR8T. 

but  wished  to  retain  their  pastor.  Thus  Emerson 
had  to  face  the  question  alone :  Shall  I  break 
with  mine  own?  He  flees  to  the  White  Moun 
tains  to  interrogate  his  unfailing  oracle,  Nature's 
divine  suggestion,  ere  he  take  the  final  step.  We 
possess  a  brief  diary  of  his  spirit's  ups  and  downs 
in  this  storm.  After  some  days  of  mental  seesaw- 
ings,  he  returns  resolved:  he  could  not  yield  his 
conviction ;  he  had  already  stigmatized  himself 
as  a  hypocrite,  if  he  dared  administer  that  sacra 
ment.  He  comes  back  to  his  congregation  and 
preaches  the  before-mentioned  last  sermon  of 
angelic  defiance,  sealing  his  emphatic  words  with 
his  deed  of  resignation.  Repeated  attemps  were 
made  to  compromise  the  scission,  but  Emerson 
could  not  be  shaken  from  his  main  purpose.  By 
a  vote  of  thirty  to  twenty-four  his  resignation 
was  accepted,  and  Emerson's  one  pastorate  had 
evolved  its  own  tragedy. 

To  this  day  the  question  is  debated :  Was  his 
act  justifiable?  Could  he  not  have  trained  his 
congregation  to  take  his  views  without  such  a 
tie-tearing  convulsion?  And  then  that  heart- 
touching  Communion  Service — could  it  not  be  in 
terpreted  as  a  symbol  by  the  symbolizing  Emer 
son  f  We  are  told  by  himself  that  these  and  sim 
ilar  questionings  haunted  the  fugitive  in  his 
mountainous  retreat.  Impartially  keen  is  his  self- 
probing:  "I  know  very  well  that  it  is  a  bad  sign 
in  a  man  to  be  too  conscientious,"  especially  a 
New  Englander.  He  is  aware  that  "the  most 


THE  BREAKING  POINT.  gl 

desperate  scoundrels  have  been  the  over-refin 
ers,"  sharpening  the  point  of  the  argument  till  it 
gets  pointless,  and  hence  without  any  prick  to 
the  conscience. 

It  is  evident  that  Emerson  has  pushed  to  that 
pass  where  he  is  fully  aware  that  he  must  force 
the  separation.  Better  now  than  later,  for  it  is 
bound  to  come.  This  little  particular  rent  might 
be  patched  up,  but  Emerson  sees  that  he  is  011  the 
march  toward  universality,  that  his  new  doctrine 
or  world-vieAV  is  going  to  embrace  all  religion, 
and  then,  transcending  the  religious  sphere,  to 
grapple  with  the  whole  spiritual  dominion  of  the 
ages.  Probably  too  he  feels  himself  in  the  best  sit 
uation  just  now  to  take  up  the  coming  conflict. 
An  untrammeled  free  individual  he  beholds  him 
self  in  life 's  mirror  once  more ;  fate  without  his 
consent  has  smitten  the  tender  conjugal  bond  and 
given  him  a  real  even  if  unwilling  release ;  also 
the  fierce  restraint  of  poverty  has  relaxed  its  grip 
upon  his  future  so  that  he  can  rest  unanxious  in 
the  sweet  composure  of  economic  liberty. 

Emerson's  young  Avife  had  died  early  in  the 
same  year,  February,  1832.  There  can  be  little 
doubt  that  while  she  lived,  she  acted  as  an  anchor 
to  hold  him  fast  to  his  calling.  Alreaclr  before 
their  marriage,  consumption  had  threatened  her, 
but  she  rallied  so  as  to  seem  out  of  danger.  Yet 
the  insidious  disease  returned,  and  Emerson  for 
nearly  two  years  was  occupied  and  pre-occupied 
with  an  ever-welling  worry  over  her  gradual 


82         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

evanishment  before  his  eyes.  The  first  winter 
after  marriage  he  took  her  to  the  mild  South  out 
of  the  raw  climate  of  New  England,  and  was  pre 
paring  for  a  similar  journey  the  following  year 
when  she  quite  suddenly  passed  away. 

Her  character  he  designates  "a  bright  revela 
tion  of  the  best  nature  of  woman."  During  this 
time  many  a  throe  of  his  heart's  anguish  pulses 
out  to  utterance  in  prose  and  verse,  most  of  which 
he  confided  to  the  intimacy  of  his  Journal.  Says 
a  relative :  ' l  He  was  in  the  habit  of  walking  out 
early  in  the  morning  to  visit  her  new-made 
grave." 

Thus  Emerson  has  in  early  life  to  pass  through 
the  discipline  of  death  in  just  about  its  most 
crushing  infliction.  The  young  wife's  deeply 
loved  presence  is  torn  out  of  his  bleeding  heart, 
and  he  moves  about  dazed  at  this  fresh  problem 
of  the  mysterious  Providential  ordeal.  Can  he 
transform  such  suffering  into  a  new  insight  and 
a  higher  reconciliation?  But  that  is  not  all.  His 
two  brothers,  of  unusual  talent  and  of  the  best 
education,  are  both  stricken  by  a  deep-seated 
malady  which  is  slowly  but  inexorably  bearing 
them  toward  dissolution.  Then  Emerson  himself 
begins  to  droop  in  health  and  to  sink  utterly  dis 
heartened  before  what  seems  to  him  the  impend 
ing  doom  of  his  family.  In  fact  the  whole  Em 
ersonian  household  appears  during  these  days  to 
have  been  haunted  with  a  gloomy  foreboding  of 
its  approaching  disappearance.  And  the  two 


THE  BREAKING  POINT.  g3 

brothers  of  Emerson  will  at  no  long  interval  fol 
low  his  wife  to  the  grave.  To  be  sure  this  sad 
presentiment  , of  Lis  tragic  lot  does  hardly  more 
than  palpitate  in  a  brief  underbreath  through  cer 
tain  fugitive  words  fleeting  from  their  prison. 
But  Emerson  by  an  herculean  act  of  resolution 
will  escape  from  what  he  at  times  deems  his  pre 
judged  domestic  appointment  with  death. 

We  feel  Emerson's  dark  struggle  against  the 
hidden  powers  over  life  repeatedly  in  his  Journal. 
He  writes:  "When  I  consider  the  constitutional 
calamity  of  my  family,  ...  I  have  little  appre 
hension  of  my  own  liability  to  the  same  evil." 
Yet  his  soul  is  wrestling  with  this  same  evil,  this 
direful  menace  hanging  over  his  nearest  and  dear 
est  kindred  and  himself.  Long,  gloomy,  and  des 
perate  is  the  battle  for  his  mastery  over  Fate,  but 
he  wins  it  at  last.  Though  his  be  the  doomed 
house  of  Tantalus,  as  he  in  view  of  its  fatalities 
would  seem  at  dreadful  moments  to  believe,  he 
rallies  and  coerces  his  own  very  doom  in  the 
pinch  of  its  victory.  Thus  Emerson  rises  to  be 
ing  a  Fate-compeller. 

Not  otherwise  can  it  be  than  that  such  a  vital 
experience  has  written  its  fiery  discipline  into 
his  character,  and  left  its  lasting  imprint  upon 
his  mental  constitution.  Emerson  has  witnessed 
with  a -tragic  interest  and  the  warmest  participa-. 
tion  the  evanescence  of  the  Person,  whereby  such 
evanescence  will  be  traced  on  his  soul,  and  be 
come  a  portion  of  his  doctrine.  Verily,  he  has 


84         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

served  his  apprenticeship  to  Destiny,  and  has 
learned  the  lasting  lesson.  We  shall  find  that 
Personality  itself,  in  the  universe  of  man  and 
God,  turns  ethereal,  fragile,  moribund  to  his  vis 
ion,  quite  uncertain  of  its  own  existence.  Ke- 
peatedly  hereafter  we  shall  have  to  note  how 
oscillatingly  Emerson  hovered  about  the  doctrine 
of  the  persistence  of  the  individual  self.  One  can 
hardly  help  thinking  that  such  a  condition  sprang 
from  the  deepest  and  most  formative  experience 
of  life,  and  thus  became  integrated  with  his  whole 
spiritual  existence.  He  accepted  his  mortal  lot 
of  finitude,  and  then  transcended  it  by  living  im 
mortally. 

But  the  Breaking  Point  is  passed,  though  it 
leaves  Emerson  broken.  Owns  he  the  remedial 
power  of  self  -recovery  ?  That  is  the  question  the 
reader  must  now  ask  of  this  Biography,  also  the 
question  which  Emerson  must  ask  of  himself. 

IV. 

WHAT  NEXT? 

Such,  then,  was  the  separative,  devastating 
Explosion  of  the  inner  expansive  forces  which 
had  long  been  gathering  in  Emerson's  soul,  really 
during  all  his  previous  years  quite  back  to  boy 
hood.  And  now  he,  still  a  young  man  under 
thirty,  is  suddenly  and  violently  hurled  out  of 
his  inherited  calling  and  creed  which  the  cen 
turies  have  handed  down  to  him  through  his  own 


WHAT  NEXT?  35 

blood.  We  may  see  him  rise  up  from  the  stun 
ning  shock  and  look  around  with  a  thin  pallid 
look  of  anxiety,  sorrow,  and  disease,  questioning 
with  whispering  lips  his  life's  oracle:  "What  next? 

The  startling  concussion  was  preceded  if  not 
caused  by  a  sermon  which  turned  out  to  be  his 
last  in  the  prescribed  course.  It  will  be  well  to 
glance  back  and  scan  this  final  utterance  of  his 
separation.  We  can  find  it  in  the  discourse 
already  mentioned  which  he  delivered  to  his  con 
gregation  shortly  after  his  return  from  his  flight 
to  the  mountains  (September  9th,  1832).  Let  us 
also  remember  that  this  is  the  only  one  of  his 
parish  sermons  which,  on  account  of  its  catastro 
phic  import,  has  been  deemed  worthy  of  publica 
tion  in  his  Works  (Centenary  Edition,  Vol  XI). 
It  bears  in  its  construction  the  double  character 
of  the  present  separative  Epoch,  with  its  two 
opposing  parts.  Then  there  is  a  decided  cleavage, 
even  antagonism  between  its  form  and  content, 
between  its  ancient  setting  and  its  modern  spirit. 
The  bottle  is  old,  but  the  wine  is  new  and  effer 
vescent  to  the  point  of  bursting  its  confine.  An 
unconscious  image  of  the  present  dualistic  Emer 
son  we  may  trace  in  its  architecture. 

First  to  be  noted  is  the  external  division  into 
its  two  colliding  portions:  for  the  authority  and 
against  the  authority  of  the  transmitted  rite  of 
the  Lord's  Supper.  Thus  the  central  word  au 
thority,  in  affirmation  and  in  negation,  is  the  axis 
of  the  discourse.  The  affirming1  first  portion  is 


86         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

historical,  scriptural,  argumentative1 ,  with  prece 
dents  bolstered  by  a  mass  of  citations.  It  should 
b£  observed  that  Emerson  is  here  formally  logical 
and  theological  as  never  again  afterwards ;  in  fact 
the  whole  drift  both  in  manner  and  meaning  is 
decidedly  anti-Emersonian,  being  contrary  to  his 
view  of  the  soul's  own  direct  inspiration  above  all 
authority,  even  biblical.  So  he  concludes  this 
portion  with  the  admonition  "against  taking 
even  the  best  ascertained  opinions  and  practices 
of  the  primitive  Church  for  our  own. ' '  How  he 
slams  the  door  in  the  face  of  all  ecclesiastical 
tradition,  as  it  were  turning  upon  himself  as  an 
ecclesiastic  with  denial,  yea  with  a  polite  self - 
undoing  contempt ! 

But  the  second  part  of  the  sermon  flows  with 
far  greater  congeniality ;  the  theme  no  longer 
toils  painfully  up  the  steep,  but  turns  and  runs 
of  itself  down-hill.  For  the  discourse  now  does 
away  with  the  rite,  though  long  established  and 
hallowed  by  memory,  and  therein  calls  forth  the 
coming  Emerson,  anti-traditional,  anti-conven 
tional,  even  anti-institutional.  To  him  this  rite 
or  indeed  any  rite  disturbs  or  rather  perverts  the 
immediate  relation  of  the  soul  to  God;  what  is 
due  to  the  deity  is  not  to  be  given  to  the  inter 
mediary.  Moreover  such  a  mediating  ceremony 
and  .even  the  mediating  person  may  suit  the  Ori 
ental  mind  which  originated  them,  but  they  be- 
longMiot  here,  we  have. transcended  that  old  alien 
world  "full  of  forms,  idols,  and  ordinances." 


WHAT  NEXT?  87 

Thus  the  preacher  in  his  own  pulpit  unfrocks  him 
self  into  freedom,  or  what  he  deems  such.  lie  has 
advanced  to  the  point  of  denying  the  rite  of  rites, 
the  Eucharist  of  the  Christian  Communion,  and 
the  pun  hits  home :  this  rite  is  not  a  right  but  a 
wrong,  even  the  highest,  to  God  Himself.  To  be 
sure,  Emerson  does  not  use  such  language,  his 
words  carefully  shy  around  within  the  traditional 
bounds  of  propriety,  though  their  thought  be  rev 
olutionary  and  Heaven-scaling.  The  clerical  vest 
ment  he  still  wears  though  in  the  role  of  the  de 
stroyer  of  clericism.  Significant  in  the  same  di 
rect-on  is  the  fact  that  Emerson  composing  this 
sermon  retains  the  old  rather  beworii  sermonic 
ordering  into  headings  and  sub-headings — a  form 
alism  which  he  will  hotly  fling  away  hereafter, 
even  if  he  cools  off  in  rare  places.  He  still  re 
tains  the  shattered  egg-shell  on  his  wing,  though 
he  pecks  at  it  till  it  drops  down,  and  he  springs 
forth  free,  soaring  in  untrammeled  flight. 

We  must,  however,  keep  in  mind  that  Emerson 
by  no  means  gets  rid  of  all  forms  and  formulas 
forever.  Particularly  he  stops  at  the  one  great 
stepping-off  place  of  his  folk,  he  never  breaks 
with  the  transmitted  Puritanic  moralism.  In 
deed  he  makes  for  clutching  just  that  as  the  one 
secure  anchorage  in  the  drifting  ocean  of  doubt. 
And  there  is  still  an  authority  very  autocratic  in 
his  creed,  that  of  the  Oversoul's  divine  descent 
into  man  with  its  omnipotent  behest.  Even  cer 
tain  recognizable  features  of  tb3  traditional  ser- 


88       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

mon  will  peep  out  to  the  last,  though  transmuted 
from  the  pulpit  through  the  lyceum  to  the  ulti 
mate  form  of  the  independent  Essay.  Nor  will 
Emerson  quit  the  church's  rostrum,  though  he  re 
fuses  its  regular  routine ;  he  becomes  a  kind  of 
sermonizing  privateer,  preaching  his  own  gospel 
from  any  tribune  sacred  or  profane;  thus  he 
shows  himself  the  shifty  sermoneer,  if  such  a 
term,  rather  undignified  but  certainly  not  un 
friendly,  can  be  withstood  by  the  shocked  reader. 
The  foregoing  tells  Emerson's  present  experi 
ence,  sudden,  cataclysmic,  evoking  a  new  stage  of 
his  Apprenticeship.  Quite  broken  and  prostrate 
he  comes  before  us,  with  a  f orefeeling  of  doom'  in 
1-is  blood,  and  a  Tantalian  suspense  at  the  recur 
ring  menace  of  Fate,  one  of  whose  mortal  blows 
has  already  shattered  his  heart.  So  we  may  hear 
him  anxiously  querying:  What  next?  Which 
way  turn?  Unconsciously  he  pulls  himself  up 
and  starts  a  new  Epoch. 


CHAPTER  THIRD 

THE  RECOVERY 

Another  decided  turn  in  Emerson's  career  now 
takes  place,  distinct  in  character  from  the  pre 
ceding  one,  indeed  quite  the  opposite  as  to  the 
essential  matter.  From  a  breaking  away  it  curves 
about  toward  a  getting  back,  from  a  separation  it 
rounds  to  a  return;  so  we  have  to  call  this  a  time 
of  recovery  and  restoration  out  of  a  deep  spir 
itual  convulsion.  Thus  it  is  the  stressful  counter- 
stroke  to  what  has  just  occurred,  and  drives  for 
ward  to  a  new  Epoch  in  the  present  Biography. 
The  man  is  subjected  to  a  fresh  discipline  in 
preparation  for  his  life 's  great  work ;  the  old 
transmitted  landmark  being  swept  away,  he  must 
build  another  of  his  own  more  adequate,  more 
characteristic  of  himself. 

If  the  previous  volcanic  Epoch  lasted  three 
years  in  gathering  secretly  its  explosive  forces 
for  the  final  upheaval  and  dissolution,  the  present 
Epoch  will  endure  about  the  same  length  of  time 
— the  restoration  rising  through  several  stages 
till  the  patient  is  sound  and  himself  again.  In 
such  fashion  the  current  of  life  bends  around, 
making  toward  a  new  and  grander  goal  after  a 
darksome  passage  through  a  fragment  of  Erebos. 
Accordingly  Emerson  we  see  undergoing  another 

89 


90        RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

triennial  course  of  training,  the  last  of  this  First 
Period,  which  is  verily  his  Apprenticeship  in 
preparation  for  his  supreme  coming  vocation. 
The  explosion  which  we  have  just  recorded  was 
the  young  revolt,  the  deeply  separative  stage  of 
his  first  grand  experience,  which  he  is  now  to 
surmount,  but  only  to  take  a  still  deeper,  more 
universal  plunge  in  opposition  to  his  time  and  its 
institutional  order.  We  are  to  see  -him  rising 
fr,om  a  whirl  in  one  of  the  lesser  eddies  of  life 
to  his  grand  baptism  in  the  ocean  of  his  entire 
existence. 

Let  us  then  glimpse  Emerson  as  he  sets  sail 
Christmas  day,  1832,  having  not  yet  passed  his 
third  decade  of  years,  on  the  small  trading-brig 
Jasper  from  Boston,  and  as  he  looks  out  smil 
ingly  eastward  over  the  indefinite  Atlantic ;  then 
let  us  note  him  in  December,  1835,  three  years 
afterward,  as  he  sits  before  the  fire  in  his  own 
home  at  Concord.  He  has  recovered  health  and 
family,  both  of  which  had  been  broken  up  in  the 
previous  upheaval ;  he  has  also  regained  vocation 
and  community,  though  in  new  forms.  But  more 
significantly  he  has  won  his  life's  stronghold 
within  and  without,  spiritually  and  physically, 
from  which  he  can  sally  forth  against  the  hosts 
of  dark-ness,  and  to  which  he  can  return  for  re 
cuperation  and  fresh  plans  of  attack.  He  has 
taken  position  in  his  Castle  of  Defiance  for  the 
rest  of  his  days. 

Accordingly   this   triennial   experience,   having 


HEALTH  RECOVERED.  91 

in  itself  a  flight  from  home  and  a  return  may  be 
deemed  one  of  his  life's  lesser  yet  well-marked 
nodes,  and  is  therefore  worthy  of  its  own  special 
exposition.  This  will  portray  his  going  forth 
and  coming  back  to  the  same  spot  of  earth,  but 
will  also,  in  such  a  spatial  and  temporal  cycle, 
show  him  enacting  a  considerable  phase  of  his 
spirit's  evolution.  He  quits  his  city,  country,  and 
continent,  and  takes  a  trip  to  the  World's  back 
ground  and  also  his  own.  A  voyage  of  discovery, 
yea  of  self-discovery  it  is,  but  its  main  fact  must 
be  seized  that  it  seeks  and  wins  the  Recovery 
both  of  body  and  mind,  which  has  become  the 
prime  condition  not  only  of  advancing  further 
but  of  living  longer. 

Note,  then,  again  and  keep  the  fact  before  the 
mind  that  in  the  organism  of  Emerson's  total 
Life-Essay,  that  this  is  the  third  and  concluding 
Epoch  of  his  Apprenticeship  to  Tradition,  during 
which  he  goes-  abroad  to  the  great  school  of  the 
Past,  to  Europe,  from  whence  he  is  to  bring  home 
lasting  spoils,  really  for  his  mastery  of  Tradition. 

I. 

HEALTH  RECOVERED 

The  stress  of  Emerson's  spiritual  collision  found 
its  echo  in  his  body  never  very  robust;  the  result 
was  he  became  a  victim  of  recurrent  illness  and  mel 
ancholy.  He  writes:  "My  malady  has  proved  so 
obstinate  and  comes  back  as  often  as  it  goes  away ; ' ' 


92         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

so  under  advice  he  will  seek  to  "prevent  these 
ruinous  relapses  by  a  sea  voyage. ' '  Another  record 
from,  a  different  source  sadly  declares:  ''Waldo  r; 
sick ;  his  spirits  droop,  I  never  saw  him  so  disheart 
ened."  We  catch  fitfully  a  strange  undertone  that 
there  lay  in  him  a  forecast  of  family  fate,  for  thus 
we  have  to  interpret  a  stray  note  in  a  letter  of  his 
brother  Charles:  "One  does  not  like  to  feel  that 
there  is  any  doom  upon  him  or  his  race;  it  seems 
to  quench  the  fire  and  freedom  of  his  hopes  and 
purposes."  So  writes  this  brother  to  the  family's 
seeress  Aunt  Mary,  forefeeling  some  lurking  fatal 
ity  in  the  kinship,  and  doubtless  in  himself,  who 
will  'glide  over  life 's  bourne  in  a  few  years. 

But  Waldo  Emerson,  hounded  by  malady  and 
melancholy,  is  now  inhaling  the  remedial  breath  of 
the  salt  sea,  and  at  once  starts  the  uplift  toward 
health  and  mind's  recovery.  The  overture  of  the 
voyage  was  a  terrific  storm,  which  consigned  the  five 
passengers  to  the  stateroom  "where  was  nausea, 
darkness,  unrest,"  yet  with  "harpy  appetite  and 
harpy  feeding."  Discomfort  enough,  not  except 
ing  filth  and  even  vomit:  "yet  I  thank  the  sea  and 
rough  weather  for  a  truckman 's  health  and  stomach 
— how  connected  with  celestial  gifts!"  Thus  the 
physical  renovation  of  the  voyage  is  getting  mani 
fest.  Then  the  many  new  objects  of  vision  call  him 
out  of  himself,. and  the  daring  struggle  of  his  ship 
and  its  crew  with  the  mighty  and  often  furious  ele 
ments  draws  his  attention  away  from  his  petty  in 
ner  see-saw,  ^s  we  mav  note  in  his  Journal.  He 


HEALTH  RECOVERED.  93 

reads  a  little,  philosophizes  quite  a  'bit,  and  even 
poetizes  somewhat.  One  rather  liquid  effusion  of 
his  sea-muse  he  has  preserved  under  date  of  Janu 
ary  6,  1833,  and  strangely  it  runs  to  the  tune  of  the 
Free  Verse  of  1918. 

Finally  on  February  2,  1833,  his  staunch  vessel 
has  overpassed  the  Ocean,  crept  through  the  straits 
of  Gibraltar,  and  reached  Malta,  striking  "from 
Boston  across  three  thousand  miles  of  stormy  water 
into  a  little  gut  of  inland  sea,  nine  miles  wide." 
The  art  in  the  churches  stirs  his  interest  and  he 
hopes  "they  will  paint  and  carve  and  inscribe  the 
walls"  of  similar  edifices  in  New  England — not  a 
very  Puritanic  expectancy.  Moreover  he  is  "learn 
ing  two  languages,"  evidently  pounding  their 
idioms  into  his  brain,  that  they  drop  fluently  from 
his  tongue  when  he  gets  to  Italy  and  France,  for  he 
is  looking  backwards  already,  not  forwards. 

And  just  that  halts  us  in  a  pause  of  surprise. 
Why  did  not  Emerson  push  on  to  new-born  Hellas, 
in  whose  independence  America  and  specially  his 
own  Boston  had  taken  such  an  interest  only  a  few 
years  since?  He  must  have  well  remembered  the 
whole  excitement,  and  particularly  the  speech  of 
his  favorite  orator  Daniel  Webster  upon  this  theme. 
But  somehow  he  took  no  pleasure  in  making  the 
native  words  of  his  dearest  Plato  flow  from  his 
tongue  in  living  speech  or  in  seeing  the  vesture  of 
nature  for  the  body  of  the  finest  poetry  in  the  world. 
Then  not  far  off  reposes  the  God-visioning  Orient 
with  whose  spirit  the  genius  of  Emerson  stood  in 


94        RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  FIRST. 

deep,  even  if  as  yet  unconscious  affinity.     Yonder 
lies  Palestine,  Egypt  is  easily  accessible— but  no,  he 

faces  the  other  way.  

Still-  we  must  put  due  stress  upon  the  great  ad 
vantage  of  this  voyage.  Emerson  doubtless  felt 
the  reconstruction  of  his  hitherto  fragile  organism, 
and  longed  to  get  back  to  work  in  realizing  his  ur 
gent  idea.  He,  the  invalid,  had  bravely  taken  his 
long  dose  of  sea-medicine,  at  a  single,  gulp  as  it 
were,  lasting  about  six  weeks,  and  never. once  touch 
ing  land:  a  swallow  thousands  of  miles  long,  as  if 
he  were  going  down  the  throat  of  the  old  Hell-clog 
Cerberus.  But  he  has  come  out  the  infernal  voy 
age  not  only  safe  but  renovated;  thus  he  has  cir 
cumvented  that  "doom  of  his  family"  which  he 
sometimes  gloomed  to  'be  impending  over  him.  For 
mark !  he  lives  till  near  fourscore ;  he  endures  all 
sorts  of  food,  of  bed,  of  conveyance,  in  many  annual 
campaigns  of  lecturing  over  the  raw  country  of  the 
West — surely  a  tough-sided,  much  enduring  Ulys 
ses.  Disease  never  again  seriously  caught  him  in 
the  vitals  till  the  last  time,  which  always  comes. 
Indeed  his  body  was  of  sterner  stuff  than  his  mind. 
and  outlasted  it  for  years.  But  now  Emerson  sails 
through  the  sea,  as,  it  were  from  frail  invalidism 
to  rugged  recuperation,  having  been  apprenticed 
to  ill-health  also  during  his  young-manhood.  So 
he  wins  his  first  great  prize — -his  health's  Recovery. 


BACK  THROUGH  THE  ANTTQUE.       95 
II. 

BACK  THROUGH  THE  ANTIQUE 

Emerson,  suddenly  facing  about,  will  float  down 
the  westward-flowing  stream  of  old  Time,  and  throw 
a  hasty  glance  at  some  of  the  antiquities  scattered 
along  its  bank.  Still  for  him  this  is  the  back  track 
— a  return,  not  an  advance ;  nevertheless  he  will 
move  on  the  line  of  man's  progress  from  the  old 
Europe  to  the  new,  taking  a  short  dip  meanwhile 
into  his  race 's  cultural  antecedents. 

So  it  comes  that  our  traveler,  having  gone  for 
ward  to  the  border-land  of  the  great  Past,  refuses 
to  push  further  to  the  East,  fcut  wheels  around  and 
starts  for  the  West,  casting  brief  glimpses  at  things 
and  men  by  the  way,  but  not  seriously  stopping  till 
he  returns  to  his  new  Occident.  Still  we  have  to 
query  why  he  shrank  from  a  gaze  into  the  two 
primeval  sources,  the  Greek  and  the  /Semitic,  of  the 
supreme  world-civilization,  which  we  may  call  the 
Mediterranean,  and  which  was  the  basis  of  his  own 
culture,  both  secular  and  religious.  The  Hellenic 
and  the  Hebrew  consciousness  had  been  the  original 
storehouse  from  which  his  spirit  ard  that  of  his 
age  had  been  fed,  but  he  shows  no  desire  to  see  the 
old  homestead  cf  the  one  or  of  the  other,  though 
both  have  the  interest  cf  antique  historic  ruins. 
This  action,  seemingly  unconscious,  indicates  to  our 
mind,  Emerson's  dominant  mood:  he  is  in  decided 
reaction  against  the  old,  the  transmitted,  the  tran 
scended,  and  so  his  spirit  calls  a  halt  to  penetrating 


96         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

further  into  its  own  antiquity.  Was  not  this  very 
voyage  caused  by  his  breach  with  tradition  ?  What 
he  could  not  endure  in  Boston,  he  will  not  accept 
here ;  so,  having  won  his  prime  Recovery,  that  of 
health,  he  turns  about  for  home,  where  he  is  to  find 
another  form  of  Recovery,  perchance  two  or  three. 

Accordingly  on  Februar3r  21,  1833,  "we  em 
barked  for  Syracuse  in  a  Sicilian  brigantine,"  and 
in  sixteen  unhasting  hours  the  ancient  city,  which 
has  such  a  famous  place  in  classical  history,  was 
sighted  and  entered.  Memories  of  antique  poetry 
bubbled  up  as  "I  drank  the  waters  of  the  fountain 
of  Arethusa"  and  breakfasted  on  "the  very  fra 
grant  Hybla?an  honey. "  Especially  the  orator 
Cicero  seems  to  have  been  the  liveliest  figure  here 
present  to  his  imagination,  which  was  doubtless 
prompted  by  hints  from  his  guide-book.  From 
Syracuse  he  rapidly  circles  around  to  other  Sicilian 
cities,  flinging  down  by  the  way  an  observation 
here  and  there,  and  sometimes  a  criticism.  But  he 
has  no  word  for  the  great  historic  phenomena  before 
him  in  that  unique  island,  around  which  the  conflict 
of  the  Mediterranean  races  swirled  for  thousands 
of  years — the  Greek,  the  Carthaginian,  the  Latin, 
the  Saracen — till  from  the  North  the  Teuton  also 
interwove  himself  into  its  history.  Really  Emer 
son  stands  in  a  kind  of  secret  opposition  to  the  op 
pressive  Past,  and  suffers  not  its  authority. 

Soon  Emerson  finds  himself  sailing  into  the  Bay 
of  Naples  and  feels  overawed  at  first  by  the  scene 
of  beauty  and  of  ancient  glory  The  very  names  he 


BACK  THROUGH  THE  ANTIQUE.       97 

hears  make  it  "hard  to  keep  one's  judgment  up 
right  and  be  pleased  only  after  your  own  way." 
This  deluge  of  greatness  from  the  olden  time  causes 
him  to  show  fight  on  the  spot,  and  so  he  brandishes 
his  pen  with  a  shout:  "I  won't  be  imposed  upon 
by  a  name."  Yet  the  deluging  cataract  of  some 
2000  years  and  more  of  Naples,  as  he  looks  out  over 
the  city,  pours  down  upon  him,  and  he  can  hardly 
maintain  himself  upright  t(  against  what  seems  the 
human  race."  But  if  Waldo  Emerson  has  one  res 
olution,  it  is  this:  he  will  not  let  his  selfhood  be 
submerged  in  this  maelstrom  of  the  Past.  So  he 
exclaims  defiantly  to  himself:  "Who  cares?  Here's 
for  the  plain  old  Adam,  the  simple  genuine  Self 
against  the  whole  world."  Such  is  the  armed  soul 
which  now  wanders  through  Naples,  recording 
sights  and  impressions  here  quite  omissible.  But 
again  we  have  to  remark  that  the  grandest  phenom 
enon,  the  deepest-searching  symbol  of  the  World's 
History  in  this  locality  the  great  symbolizer  Emer 
son  shuffles  by  with  one  meaningless  sentence — 
Pompeii,  which  proclaims  in  death's  awful  presence 
the  resurrection  through  destruction. 

Let  Naples  pass,  with  its  Greek  substrate  of 
speech  and  spirit  which  one  can  detect  in  it  to-day. 
Next  Emerson  reaches  a  very  different  city,  one 
which  has  wielded  the  greatest  and  most  lasting 
urban  influence  on  our  globe.  What  will  he  do  with 
the  overwhelming  appearance  past  and  present  of 
Rome?  He  is  thirty  years  old,  a  highlv  educated 
man  with  classical  trairivo-.  and  has  read  all  his 


98         RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

life.  What  we  have  called  his  Apprenticeship  is 
drawing  to  a  close.  Here  is  a  marvelous  opportu 
nity  for  experiencing  the  past  at  its  greatest  and 
also  in  its  limitation,  for  realizing  its  supreme 
achievement  as  well  as  the  fate  which  lurks  gnaw 
ing  in  its  grandeur.  Emerson  still  saw  Papal  Rome 
in  all  outer  gorgeous  ceremony  and  inner  organ 
ized  hold  on  the  hearts,  heads,  and  consciences  of 
hundreds  of  millions.  Then  the  Fine  Arts,  those 
sovereign  forms  of  expression  which  in  splendor  re 
veal  the  spirit  of  bygone  ages — sculpture,  painting, 
architecture,  music — were  all  concentrated  in  the 
Eternal  City  to  make  it  beautiful  and  to  keep  it 
eternal. 

Hardly  more  than  a  stupendous  stare  does  he 
give  to  this  mass  of  spiritual  wealth;  certainly  he 
dares  no  serious  mental  grapple.  He  goes  around 
dutifully  and  looks  at  all  set  down  in  the  pro 
gramme  ;  external  admiration  he  lisps  ritually,  but 
we  can  often  feel  the  muffled  protest.  He  is  step 
ping  now  in  the  transmitted  treadmill,  and  he  can 
not  well  turn  back.  Still  once  in  a  while  a  mutter 
breaks  out,  as  when  he  sees  the  Pope  washing  the 
feet  of  thirteen  pilgrims  (one  was  from  Kentucky)  : 
"Why  should  not  he  (His  Holiness)  leave  one  mo 
ment  this  service  of  fifty  generations  and  speak  out 
of  his  own  Heart — though  it  were  but  a  single 
word?"  This  Emerson  at  Rome  cannot  help  recall 
ing  his  own  conflict  with  a  transmitted  church  cere 
mony  at  Boston — really  the  key-note  of  his  present 
mood.  Strange!  v  for  him  the  phi  of  charm  of  old 


BACK  THROUGH  THE  ANTIQUE.       99 

Rome  "is  the  name  of  Cicero,"  its  greatest  talker 
while  its  greatest  doer,  Caesar,  is  rather  contemptu 
ously  unpedestaled :  i '  A  soul  as  great  as  his  or  any 
other's  is  your  own."  Verily  the  World's  History 
lies  not  in  the  purview  of  Emerson  right  here  at  its 
chief  center,  nor  does  he  recognize  the  supreme 
world-historical  character  in  Rome's  evolution. 
When  he  jbeholds  the  famous  Torso  of  Hercules  it 
recalls  ''some  old  revolutionary  cripple,"  sight  fa 
miliar  to  Emerson  from  boyhood  as  he  was  born  only 
some  twenty  years  after  the  war  of  Independence. 
Such  does  the  ideal  Greek  statue  famed  -by  Winkel- 
mann  and  Goethe  become  to  the  Yankee  tourist.  His 
crass  Philistinism  quite  equals  that  of  another 
American  innocent,  Mark  Twain,  on  a  similar  jour 
ney. 

So  after  a  shortened  month,  hardly  time  enough 
to  look  around  in  such  a  wilderness  of  mighty  things 
handed  down,  Emerson  turns  his  back  on  Rome. 
Yet,  as  we  shall  see  in  his  later  works,  he  stored 
up  much  in  these  few  days,  not  forgetting  his  dis 
gust.  From  the  very  presence  of  Antiquity  in  her 
most  beautiful  and  venerable  shape  he  averts  his 
face  wearing  one  of  his  Sardonic  smiles,  which  he 
will  hereafter  repeat  more  than  once  in  his  prose. 

Winding  out  of  Rome,  through  vales  and  round 
hill-sides,  Emerson  arrives  at  the  second  greatest  of 
Italy's  past  cities — Florence,  which  belongs  not  to 
the  Roman-  world,  but  to  the  distinctively  Italian 
era.  The  community  most  creative  of  genius,  not 
political  or  military,  but  poetic  and  artistic,  in  the 


100      KALPH  WALDO  BMBR8ON—PART  FIRST. 

whole  Peninsula;  why  should  just  that  be?  Two 
sons  it  brought  forth,  mightiest  of  their  kind,  Dante 
and  Michael  Angelo,  .both  of  whom,  however,  had  to 
quit  their  native  soil  in  order  to  produce  their  su 
preme  works,  not  to  speak  of  the  man  of  science, 
Galileo.  Emerson  passes  through  the  Florentine 
Gallery  of  Sculpture,  Painting,  and  Architecture, 
but  its  most  original  structures,  the  Palazzos,  seem 
hardly  to  have  caught  his  attention.  Michael  An 
gelo  overwhelms  him,  but  Dante  is  a  more  hazy 
problem,  never  hereafter  to  become  quite  visible  in 
spite  many  allusions.  He  sees  the  English  poet 
Landor,  evidently  with  no  great  reward.  Far  more 
suggestive  is  the  fact  of  his  little  flirtation  with  the 
Florentine  flower-girl:  "I  met  the  fair  Erminia 
to-day."  A  unique  record  in  Mr.  Emerson's  ex 
perience  ;  never  again  will  that  happen  to  him  in 
this  life.  He  reads  Goethe  here,  and  has  been  read 
ing  him  from  Malta — I  wonder  what  book  of  the 
master  ? 

But  mark  the  change  creeping  over  him  in  the 
following:  "We  come  out  to  Europe  to  learn  what 
is  the  uttermost  which  social  man  has  yet  done." 
Does  not  that  prognosticate  a  new  attitude  toward 
the  Past  ?  And  then  again  as  if  talking  with  him 
self  in  a  kind  of  reproof:  "To  make  sincere  good 
use  of  what  he  sees,  he  needs  to  put  a  double  and 
treble  guard  upon  the  independence  of  his  judg 
ment."  Who  is  he?  None  other  than  the  diarist 
himself,  now  taking  stock  of  himself.  But  it  is  a 
rather  late  repentance,  for  on  the  next  page  of  the 


BACK  THROUGH   TH-L    .\  V  77  gif //*;'.  tf*\ 

Journal  we  read :  ' '  Sad  I  leave  Florence,  the  pleas 
ant  city.  I  have  not  even  seen  it  all ' ' — and  so  with 
a  feeling  of  just  having  started  he  has  to  quit,  cr 
thinks  he  has,  after  a  stay  of  only  one  month.  It 
would  appear  that  the  Tuscan  city  with  its  world- 
art  was  nearer  to  him  than  ancient  Rome  with  its 
world-history.  He  seems  to  have  gotten  something 
very  real  at  Florence — nothing  less  than  a  new  con 
sciousness  of  his  limitation,  a  most  valuable  kind  of 
knowledge,  which  every  Westerner  gets  or  ought  to 
get  in  rambling  over  beautiful  Italy. 

Passing  through  a  number  of  the  lesser  cities  of 
Northern  Italy  and  tagging  a  brief  note  on  each, 
he  enters  the  third  Italian  sovereign  city,  Venice, 
the  bride  of  the  sea.  But  in  contrast  with  Florence, 
Venice  repels  him,  disgusts  him  even  with  its  mag 
nificence  born  of  so  much  cruelty.  He  swallows  an 
overdose  of  its  splendors  with  great  haste,  and 
greater  disgust;  the  result  is  the  following  stom 
achic  outburst:  "I  am  speedily  satisfied  with  Ven 
ice — a  city  for  beavers,  a  most  disagreeable  resi 
dence.  You  feel  always  in  prison,  solitary."  So 
after  two  days  he  turns  to  flight  from  this  unique 
sea-shell  of  a  world,  which  the  English-speaking 
man  easily  loves,  if  not  through  itself,  at  least 
through  Shakespeare,  who  must  have  seen  it,  we 
think,  in  order  to  build  those  two  poetic  cities 
after  its  model,  such  as  we  behold  in  Othello  and  in 
Merchant  of  Venice. 

From  Venice  the  overfull  traveler  skims  doz 
ingly  along  North  Italy  to  the  next  great  Italian 
city — Milan.  Here  he  centers  upon  the  Cathedral 


1.02      R4.&PH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

with  its  hundreds  of  pinnacles  and  thousands  of 
statues,  all  of  white  marble  glistening  like  icicled 
frost  work.  Thence  again  follows  a  brain-dizzying 
whirl  through  churches  and  galleries  of  art,  and 
soon  he  whizzes  past  the  grand  mined  master-piece 
of  Leonardo,  the  Last  Supper,  jotting  tritely  down, 
"The  face  of  Christ  is  still  very  remarkable."  Well, 
how  could  he  like  that  picture,  which  must  have  viv 
idly  recalled  his  own  last  intended  Eucharist  at 
Boston,  from  which  burst  up  the  most  furious  explo 
sion  of  his  life?  He,  as  Christian  clergyman,  had 
been  reproached  with  betraying  his  Master,  assur 
edly  not  according  to  justice;  still  the  uncanny 
grimace  of  Leonardo's  Judas  knocking  over  the 
salt  may  have  echoed  an  unpleasant  whisper  to  him, 
though  of  course  he  records  nothing  of  the  kind. 

But  what  he  does  set  down  with  some  vehemence 
is  his  deep  disgust  at  Milan  with  its  industry  in 
copying  rather  than  in  creating.  On  this  superb 
architectural  spot  his  impatience  bubbles  out 
against  all  architecture,  in  which  he  can  see  only 
an  imitation.  No  spontaneous  upburst  in  this  art, 
he  thinks ;  forever  and  ever  repetition  on  repetition 
repeated  is  this  cathedral  "with  its  5000  marble 
people  all  over  its  towers."  So  the  great :  churches 
of  Italy-  "are  poor  far-behind  imitations"  of-  the 
soul's  creative  architecture.  We  feel  like  crying  to 
him  across  -the  years:  0  Emerson,  high  time  it  is 
that  thou  quit  this  Italian  world  of  art,  against 
which  thou  hast  in  thy  spirit  reacted  with  such  in 
tensity. 

Accordingly  we  read  that  after  three  days'  stay 


BACK  THROUGH  THE  ANTIQUE.      1Q3 

in  the  Lombard  capital,  he  is  pushing  rapidly  for 
the  border,  intent  upon  crossing  the  Alps  into 
France.  Evidently  he  has  had  a  surfeit  of  art,  the 
treasures  of  Venice  and  Milan  have  produced  a 
satiety  which  puts  him  to  flight.  About  three 
months  and  a  half  he  has  been  trying  to  swallow  all 
Italy  past  and  present,  in  its  artistic  manifesta 
tion;  the  result  is  for  the  nonce  a  kind  of  mental 
dyspepsia.  From  dead  Syracuse  in  the  South  to 
living  Milan  in  the  North  he  had  raced  through  the 
six  greatest,  most  typical  Italian  cities,  with  a 
good  deal  of  the  hurry-worry  of  the  restless  rover 
who  will  see  everything  in  no  time,  but  really  sees 
nothing  in  all  time. 

What  did  Emerson  get  out  of  this  journey  for 
permanent  use  ?  He  had  seen  the  supreme  modern 
art-world  in  its  three .'.  visible  manifestations — 
Sculpture,  Painting,  Architecture.  ;  He  had  looked 
his  eye-sight  and  soul-sight  blunt,  and  needed  rest. 
Moreover  his  mood  was  not  altogether  sympathetic. 
Italy  was  a  past  world,  it  dominated  in  art  as  well 
as  in  religion  through  tradition,  which  was  just  now 
the  Emersonian  devil.  We  have  to  think  that  he 
was  not  in  temper  to  grapple  with  the  grandeur  of 
the  Italian  phenomenon.  Hence  there  was  little  or, 
no  spiritual  appropriation  of  this  art-world.  Still 
he  had  seen  much  and  gathered  many  facts,  which 
we  shall  often  see  rise  in  his  later  works.  And  he 
will  frequently  recur  to  the  problem  of  art,  .meditat 
ing  and  writing  on  it,  with  many  a  keen  suggestion 
but  with  no  fundamental  mastery. 

Still  his  Italian  experience  must  be  set  down  as 


104       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON — PART  FIRST. 

a  noteworthy  stage  of  what  we  call  his  Recovery 
inner  and  outer.  The  mild  climate,  his  bodily  activ 
ity,  his  turn  outward  to  the  object,  his  change  from 
introspection  to  extrospection  helped  to  restore  his 
health,  both  mental  and  physical.  It  was  also  a 
voyage  of  discovery,  and  chiefly  he  discovered  a 
good  deal  about  himself.  Antiquated  Italy  con 
firmed  his  protest  against  the  antiquated  forms  of 
the  new  world.  This  transmitted  art  was  but  an 
other  example  of  the  ill  of  tradition,  and  taught 
the  same  lesson  as  the  transmitted  religion  of  New 
England,  against  which  he  still  stood  in  battle  line. 
His  relation  to  the  Antique  has  been  at  least 
brought  home  by  the  Italian  trip,  and  he  turns  his 
face  toward  his  next  European  experience. 

ra. 

BACK  THROUGH  THE  MODERN 

"The  whole  of  the  day  (June  12,  1833)  was 
spent  in  crossing  the  mountain  by  the  celebrated 
road  of  the  Simplon,  cut  and  built  by  Buono- 
parte,"  Thus  our  symbol-seeing  Emerson  is  sur 
mounting  the  grand  barrier  between  the  old  and 
the  new  through  the  passage  made  "by  the  great 
Hand  of  6ur  age,"  as  he  calls  the  mighty  shape 
who  towers  the  human  Colossus  striding  from 
Italy  to  France  both  in  his  deed  and  his  origin. 
The  mountainous  work  impresses  the  coming 
writer  with  the  huge  outline  of  one  .of  his  ' {  Rep 
resentative  Men."  Arriving  at  Geneva  he  ex- 


BACK  THROUGH  THE  MODERN.       1Q5 

claims:  "Here  I  am  in  the  stern  old  town,  the 
resort  of  such  various  minds — of  Calvin,"  the 
great  believer,  who  is  put  first  on  the  list  by  the 
Puritan,  and  who  is  then  followed  by  those  fa 
mous  unbelievers — Rousseau,  Gibbon,  Voltaire. 
Emerson  might  well  have  queried:  To  which 
class  will  Fate  assign  me  ?  Who  will  decide  that 
for  him  to-day?  But  let  us  turn  with  him  down 
the  road  for  Paris. 

Emerson,  accordingly,  flees  across  the  Alps 
from  the  Past  to  the  Present,  from  the  Ancient 
to  the  Modern,  from  Italy  to  France,  and  at  once 
all  seems  changed — "the  cities,  the  language,  the 
faces,  the  manners."  After  a  continuous  ride  of 
ten  days  from  Milan  he  arrived  at  Paris,  June  20, 
1833.  Mid  the  whirl  of  the  stage-coach  he  has 
had  time  to  reflect  on,  what  he  has  passed  through. 
After  all  he  misses  antique  Italy:  "I  have  seen 
so  much  in  five  months  that  the  magnificence  of 
Paris  will  not  take  my  eye  to-day."  Melancholy 
is  the  transition:  "I  was  sorry  to  find  that  in 
leaving  Italy  I  had  left  forever  that  air  of  an 
tiquity  and  history  which  her  towns  possess,  and 
in  coming  hither  had  come  to  a  loud,  modern  New 
York  of  a  place"  (Chicago  having  not  yet  at 
tained  its  world-wide  glory  of  being  the  unap- 
proached  example  of  vulgar  modernity  in  Eastern 
eyes). 

About  a  month  Emerson  loiters  around  Paris  in 
much  desultory  sightseeing,  for  which  the  oppor 
tunity  is  enticing.  Very  little  he  says  concern- 


106      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

ing  its  art,  having  been  sated  with  that  subject 
in  the  South.  His  chief  interest  seems  to  have 
dropped  back  to  Nature,  as  he  found  it  gathered, 
ordered,  and  labeled  in  the  famous  Parisian  gar 
den  of  Plants.  His  delight  is  now  "in  the  inex 
haustible  riches  of  Nature."  We  hear  anticipa 
tions  of  his  coming  work.  "I  feel  the  centipede 
in  me,"  and  all  life.  "I  am  moved  by  strange 
sympathies ;  I  say  continually :  I  will  be  a  nat 
uralist."  And  we  catch  not  a  word  about  litera 
ture,  of  which  a  great  new  upburst  was  just  then 
taking  place  in  Paris,  centering  around  Victor 
Hugo  and  the  Romantic  School.  Rather  does  he 
brood  in  a  curious  presentiment  of  the  rising  ani 
mal  evolution:  "Not  a  form  so  grotesque,  so  sav 
age,  but  is  an  expression  of  some  property  in  man 
the  observer — an  occult  relation,  between  the  very 
scorpions  and  man."  Such  is  the  Emersonian 
foreglow.  of  Darwin's  sunburst,  a  quarter  of  a 
century  later.  Here,  then,  our  traveler  has  run 
upon  a  very  significant  item  of  his  own  selfhood 
— he  must  have  become  what  he  is,  glimpsing 
dimly  and  from  afar  his  own  evolution.  To  Em 
erson  Nature  was  always  very  natural,  while  Art 
was  more  or  less  artificial. 

• '.  Remarkable,  .then,  •  it  seems_  that  in  scribbling 
Paris,  .more  literary  than  any  other  city  on  our 
globe,  literature  hardly  gets  a  glance  from  Em 
erson,  the  coming  man  of  letters.  The  language 
could  not  have  stood  in  his  way;  at  least  with  a 
little  effort  the  obstacle  was  removable,  as  he  had 


BACK  THROUGH  THE  MODERN.      1Q7 

already  some  knowledge  of  French.  Was  he  too 
much  of  a  classicist  to  like  the  new  movement? 
Nor  does  he  seem  to  give  any  response  to  the  in 
tense  political  throbbings  of  France  which  at  this 
time  was  still  in  the  throes  of  the  dynastic  turn  from 
Legitimist  to  Orleanist.  Once  indeed  he  does  cry 
out  in  disgust :  '  *  Fie  !  Louis  Philippe ! ' '  and 
flings  a  single  sneer  at  "the  whirligig  politics  of 
the  city. ' '  Well,  he  was  gifted  with  about  the 
same  political  lukewarmth  in  his  own  country, 
as  his  Diary  shows  for  many  years.  Still  he  had 
the  taste  for  one  little  Parisian  escapade  which 
he  records:  "I  went  this  evening  to  Frascati's, 
long  the  most  noted  of  the  gambling  houses  or 
hells  of  Paris,' '  but  he  invested  only  one  franc, 
and  that  went  to  the  hat  keeper.  The  rest  he  does 
not  tell. 

But  more  surprising  still  is  the  fact  that  Em 
erson  turned  entirely  aside  from  Germany,  the 
spiritual  fountain  head  of  Transcendentalism 
which  was  to  play  such  an  important  part  in  his 
career.  Goethe  indeed  had  just  died,  but  the  in 
fluence  of  the  modern  German  Eenascence  was  in 
full  swing.  Moreover  Boston  had  already  for 
some  years- -been  tapping  the  Teutonic  movement; 
already -at  Harvard  Emerson  had  met  itr:- in  some 
of  his  teachers ;  he  speaks  especially  of  Edward 
Everett,  the 'orator.  Here  undoubtedly  the  lan 
guage  confronted  him  terribly,  but  that  obstacle 
too  could  have  been  surmounted.  Already  he  was 
aware  that  Carlyle,  th6  man  whom  he  chiefly 


108      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  FIRST. 

wished  to  see  in  Europe,  drew  his  chief  inspira 
tion  from  Teutonia.  But  somehow  Emerson  did 
not  care  to  quench  his  thirst  at  first  sources ;  in 
this  at  least  he  favored  the  mediator,  even  the 
translator. 

Enough  then  of  this  continental  confusion  of 
tongues  !  Emerson  feels  ' '  the  extreme  pleasure  to 
hear  English  spoken  in  the  streets,  to  understand 
all  the  children  at  play,"  when  he  gets  put  down 
in  London  (July  20,  1833).  For  some  six  weeks 
he  spreads  himself  over  England  and  Scotland 
rather  superficially — he  sees  the  poets  Coleridge 
and  Wordsworth,  and  other  celebrities,  with  a 
soon  satisfied  curiosity.  But  as  the  chief  object 
of  his  journey  he  has  to  hunt  up  at  the  last  mo 
ment,  Thomas  Carlyle. 

Thus  the  New  Englander  realizes  that  he  has 
come  back  to  his  remote  anc&stral  home,  to  the 
fountain-head  of  his  transmitted  speech,  educa 
tion,  manners,  institutions,  blood  and  belief.  One 
may  well  think  that  the  ghost  of  old  Peter  Bulk- 
ley,  the  pioneer  of  his  stock  and  its  greatest  char 
acter  hitherto,  haunted  often  his  footsteps,  and 
even  whispered  him:  "This  is  the  land,  this  the 
folk  from  which  you  get  your  essential  soul- 
how  can  you  ever  be  rid  of  that?"  The  whole 
visit  must  have  been  a  stunning  lesson  in  tradi 
tion  to  the  anti-traditional  Emerson;  from  all 
sides  flowed  in  upon  him  the  antecedents  cultural 
and  even  physical,  which  went  to  his  making. 
Very  different  was  his  experience  in  Latin 


BACK  THROUGH  THE  MODERN.       1Q9 

antique  Italy,  where  everything  was  so  strange, 
and  where  his  advent  seemed  to  him  '  *  like  that  of 
a  being  of  another  planet  wrho  invisibly  visits  the 
earth. "  But  here  he  now  finds  his  own,  though 
hundreds  of  years  old,  and  immemorially  trick 
ling  down  to  him  in  his  own  blood. 

Still  I,  for  one,  take  it  ill  of  him  that  he  did  not 
make  a  pious  pilgrimage  to  the  ancestral  shrine  of 
"a  distinguished  minister  of  Woodhill  in  Bed 
fordshire  descended  from  a  noble  family,"  Peter 
Bulkley,  forefather  of  Musketaquid  nearly  two 
centuries  before  this  journey,  but  now  world- 
famous  as  the  heroic  progenitor  of  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson.  Or  did  he  perform  this  act  of  tradi 
tional  piety,  and  keep  quiet  about  it?  But  there 
was  a  living  prophet  in  the  land  to  whose  seques 
tered  retreat  he  was  seeking  the  way. 

It  would  seem  no  great  cause  for  wonder  in  the 
reader  that  Emerson's  Diary  becomes  quite  par 
alyzed  during  this  English  trip,  being  meagre  to 
the  last  thinness  both  in  quantity  and  quality, 
where  we  would  expect  it  to  be  the  most  exuber 
ant.  At  Home  he  plays  with  the  boys,  seemingly 
for  a  little  society ;  at  Paris  he  ' l  lives  alone  and 
seldom  speaks."  But  in  England  he  can  talk  his 
dialect,  and  feel  quite  at  home.  Whence  comes 
it  all?  The  inheritance  of  ages  which  he  had  re 
sented  and  was  intending  to  cast  off,  now  plumps 
down  upon  him  and  stuns  him  to  a  kind  of  speech- 
lessness.  Quite  a  discipline  was  this  English  trip 
in  Emerson's  Apprenticeship — verily  a  new  train- 


HO      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

ing  into  the  old  and  hoarily  transmitted  Past. 
What  will  he  do  with  it  hereafter? 

Let  the  answer  pass  for  the  present,  for  he  will 
yet  tell  us.  But  listen  to  that  note  of  longing 
heard  back  yonder  in  Paris  already:  "if  he  do 
not  see  Carlyle  in  Edinburgh" — .  And  who  is  this 
Carlyle  whom  inquiry  shows  to  be  almost  un 
known  even  among  the  literary  world  in  London? 
What  bond  of  sympathy  so  deep  has  he  in  com 
mon  with  Transatlantic  Emerson?  A  voice  very 
small,  though  not  quite  still  is  Carlyle 's  at  pres 
ent,  but  it  has  uttered  its  protest  against  the  ac 
cepted,  the  transmitted,  the  ossified  in  religion, 
politics,  and  literature.  Emerson  has  heard,  the 
wee  note  already  in  his  home  far  across  the  ocean, 
and  he  must  hunt  up  and  see  his  prophet,  whose 
living  word  he  will  hearken  and  carry  back  in 
his  heart — else  his  journey  will  have  no  right 
ending,  will  in  fact  leave  the  last  ripe  fruit  of  it 
unplucked. 

Still  the  ancestral  land  and  folk  have  left  a 
deep  impression  upon  Emerson's  unconscious  life, 
which  will  keep  welling  up  to  the  surface  here 
after  by  way  of  praise  and  blame.  Then  some 
fourteen  years  later  (in  1847)  he  will  return 
thither  in  a  kind  of  flight  from  his  own  New  Eng 
land  back  to  the  old,  of  which  visit  he  will  leave 
a  full  and  enduring  record.  But  behold !  he  has 
at  last  found  his  sequestered  prophet. 


EMERSON  AND  CARLYLE.  HI 

IV. 

EMERSON  AND  CARLYLE 

That  peculiar  presentimental  strain  in  Emerson 
which  we  shall  often  note  hereafter,  has  felt  out 
beforehand  the  man  of  all  Europe  whom  he 
wishes  to  see  face  to  face  and  to  hear  intone  the 
living  word.  When  Emerson  first  began  to 
glimpse  the  auroral  gleam  of  the  as  yet  unrisen 
literary 'genius  who  was  to  be  his  spiritual  yoke 
fellow  during  life,  we  do  not  know.  But  it  is  , 
possible  to  indicate  what  seems  his  earliest  dis 
tinctive  recognition  in  a  joyous  jotting  of  his 
Journal  dated  October  1,  1832:  "I  am  cheered 
and  instructed  by  this  paper  on  Corn  Law 
Rhymes  in  the  Edinburgh  (Review)  by  my  Ger- 
manick  new-light  writer  whoever  he  be.  He  gives 
us  confidence  in  our  principles.  He  assures  the 
truth-lover  every  where  of  sympathy.  Blessed 
art  that  makes  books,  and  so  joins  me  to  this 
stranger  by  that  perfect  railroad."  Said  paper 
was  by  anonymous  Carlyle. 

Thus  the  forecasting  Emerson  with  a  sort  of 
prayerful  gratitude  hails  the  new  luminary  of 
writ  whose  name  even  he  does  not  yet  know.  The 
evangel  drops  suddenly  upon  him  from  the  un 
seen  Beyond,  imparting  to  him  fresh  confidence 
in  his  principles,  which  have  just  been  sorely  put 
to  the  proof.  At  the  same  time  Emerson  detects 
that  this  writer  draws  from  a  source  outside  him 
self,  designated  here  as  Germanick,  though  the 


112      RALPH  WALDJ  EMERSOX—PART  FIRST. 

subject  be  English  and  concerning  an  English 
man.  The  rhymer  reviewed  attracts  our  poet, 
but  still  more  the  reviewer. 

In  such  words  Emerson  communes  with  himself 
not  quite  three  months  before  he  starts  for  Eu 
rope,  and  not  quite  eleven  months  before  he 
tracks  Carlyle  to  the  latter 's  lair  at  Craigenput- 
tock.  It  should  also  be  emphasized  that  the  fore 
going  insertion  was  written  only  a  few  days  after 
Emerson's  withdrawal  from  his  pulpit,  while  the 
1  afterstrokes  of  that  trying  struggle  were  still 
pounding  in  his  bosom,  and  when  he  most  needed 
to  be  "cheered  and  instructed"  by  this  strong- 
worded  paper  of  Carlyle.  In  fact  it  just  hits  his 
mood  by  celebrating  the  courage  and  the  defiance 
of  the  Corn  Law  Rhymer,  who  in  all  his  poverty 
both  of  food  and  poetry  "has  abjured  Hypocrisy 
and  Servility,"  and  refused  to  "bow  the  knee  to 
Baal."  Emerson,  rejected  and  dejected,  having 
read  himself  into  the  unknown  writer  as  well  as 
into  the  humble  hero  of  that  article,  rose  out  of 
his  blue  despondency,  to  himself  saying :  I  must 
know  more  of  that  nameless  rescuer  of  mine  who 
has  thus  descended  into  my  life  just  at  the  Provi 
dential  moment  with  his  new  Gospel. 

Accordingly  we  have  to  think  that  Emerson 
started  on  the  hunt  through  the  British  Reviews 
for  other  works  of  his  benefactor.  Soon  he  indi 
cates  in  his  Journal  (October  19,  1832)  that  he 
has  dug  up  back  numbers  of  Eraser's  Magazine 
and  has  read  Carlyle 's  notice  of  Schiller,  now 


EMERSON  AND   CARLYLK.  ]\% 

mure  than  eighteen  months  old.  Here  too  we  find 
this  fervent  apostrophe  which  shows  that  he  has- 
by  this  time  uncovered  the  name  of  his  deliverer  :• 
"If  Carlyle  knew  what  an  interest  I  have  in  his. 
persistent  goodness,  would  it  not  be  worth  one' 
effort  more,  one  prayer,  one  meditation!"  Still 
Emerson  betraj^s  a  throb  of  fear  for  the  constancy 
of  his  new-found  leader:  ""Will  he  resist  the  de 
luge  of  bad  example  in  England  ? ' '  And  the  con 
vert  almost  beseeches  his  ghostly  mediator  "not 
to  betray  the  love  and  trust  which  he  has  awak 
ened.  ' '  Does  this  note  of  anxiety  spring  from  his 
recent  experience  of  disappointment? 

So  we  have  to  conceive  Emerson  at  this  time 
occupied  for  dear  life  with  one  supreme  fate- 
coercing  task :  he  must  delve  for  and  devour  the 
writings  of  Thomas  Carlyle  not  yet  collected,  but 
scattered  at  random  through  various  English  pe 
riodicals.  He  also  tells  where  he  wrought:  "I 
go  to  the  Atheneum  (Boston)  and  read,"  setting 
doubtless  the  librarians  on  the  scent  after  more 
articles.  We  may  infer  that  he  had  pretty  well 
finished  in  about  six  weeks  the  most  if  not  all  of 
the  Essays  of  Thomas  Carlyle  up  to  date,  possi 
bly  from  the  first  one  printed  in  1827  on  Richter. 
For  we  find  this  indication  in  his  Journal  seem 
ingly  about  mid  November,  1832:  "I  read  that 
man  is  not  a  clothes-horse,  and  come  out  and  meet 
my  young  friend.  .  .  .  who  little  imagines  that 
he  points  a  paragraph  for  Thomas  Carlyle."  Here 
Emerson  appears  to  have  somehow  gotten  the 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON  —  PART  FIRST. 


clew  of  Sartor  quite  a  year  before  its  first  publi 
cation  in  Fraser  (November,  1833).  Of  course 
the  idea  delighted  him  immensely,  since  he  had 
just  thrown  up  his  vocation,  that  he  might  not  be 
a  clothes-horse,  the  depository  of  Time's  old  gar 
ments,  especially  of  the  clerical  pattern. 

However  this  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  Emer 
son  up  to  the  end  of  1832  when  he  starts  for  Eu 
rope,  could  have  found  access  to  some  two  dozen 
or  more  of  Carlyle's  magazine  articles  which  had 
been  written  during  the  five  preceding  years, 
from  1827.  Moreover  these  productions  form  the 
most  influential  and  universally  readable  portion 
of  Carlyle's  works.  To-day  they  are  perused  by 
many  who  will  accept  none  of  his  later  writings. 
In  his  life's  history  they  likewise  reveal  a  very 
characteristic  stage  of  his  development.  But 
especially  did  they  appeal  to  Emerson  whom  they 
picked  up  just  at  this  nodal  psychologic  crisis. 
It  may  be  doubted  if  Carlyle  ever  wrote  anything 
afterwards  which  so  decisively  took  hold  of  his 
present  disciple.  In  the  coming  years  Emerson 
will  show  his  gratitude  for  his  rescue  by  rescuing 
in  turn  Carlyle  from  downright  hunger,  and  prob 
ably  saving  him  to  literature.  Nevertheless  the 
pupil  will  later  strike  into  his  own  independent 
road,  refusing  to  wear  any  other  man's  ready- 
made  clothes,  even  his  aforetime  master's, 


THE  VISIT.  H5 

V. 

THE  VISIT 

Accordingly  Emerson  with  all  the  zeal  of  young 
discipleship  sets  out  to  find  the  master,  obscure  and 
almost  hidden  in  his  lonely  lair,  and  after  consider 
able  enterprise  succeeds  in  reaching  the  shrine  of 
his  present  devotion.  Small  and  fortuitous  though 
it  seems,  it  was  a  germinal  deed  of  Emerson's  life, 
done  with  his  prophetic  instinct  of  some  future  ful 
filment.  Thus  the  two  sons  of  Zeus  are  brought  to 
gether  to  start  their  spirit's  flight,  and  they  begin 
to  circle  about  each  other  for  their  own  time,  and 
we  may  think,  for  all  time.  Moreover  their  bond 
will  leave  to  the  future  a  new  beautiful  image  of  lit 
erary  friendship,  perhaps  the  most  enduring  and  in 
spiring  of  its  kind. 

Emerson,  hastening  northward  from  London  and 
bearing  letters  of  introduction  to  Carlyle  at  Edin 
burgh,  failed  to  find  him  there,  and  nobody  could 
quite  tell  where  he  was,  so  complete  had  been  his  / 
social  withdrawal  from  the  Scottish  capital. 
Finally  the  secretary  at  the  University  of  Edin 
burgh  dug  up  his  address — Craigenputtock  on  the 
moors,  fifteen  miles  from  Dumfries,  accessible  only 
by  private  conveyance,  a  farm  in  Nithdale.  Hardly 
a  beaten  track  -to  that  eagle's  eyrie;  but  Emerson, 
the  spirit's  hunter,  was  not  to  be  deterred  by  such 
obstacles,  for  Carlyle  was  just  then  the  supreme 
goal  of  his  European  Journey.  Says  he :  "I  found 
the  house  amid  desolate  heatherv  hills  where  the 


116       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  FIRST. 

lonely  scholar  nourished  his  mighty  heart, ' '  though 
"unknown  and  exiled  on  that  hill-farm,  and  not  a 
person  to  speak  to  within  sixteen  miles  except  the 
minister  of  Dunscore, ' '  who  also  got  shy  of  him  at 
last,  doubtless  on  account  of  his  heresies. 

What  was  the  attraction  ?  "We  have  already  noted 
how  Emerson's  attention  for  some  time  had  been 
drawn  to  the  series  of  articles  in  the  Edinburgh  and 
other  British  Reviews,  wherein  he  saw  a  new  star 
blaze  across  the  literary  firmament.  So  unique 
were  they  in  style  and  matter  that  he  began  to  seek 
after  the  author.  The  result  is  he  has  reached  the 
solitary  farmhouse  from  which  these  Essays  were 
sent  forth,  and  is  knocking  at  the  door,  where  he  is 
received  with  warm  hospitality  by  Thomas  and 
Jane  Carlyle. 

But  let  us  first  premise  that  the  author's  main  ob 
ject  in  these  Essays  was  to  tap  the  new  German 
Literature  and  make  it  flow  over  into  English.  It 
was  manifest  that  Carlyle  deemed  himself  an  inter 
preter  of  the  supreme  literary  phenomenon  of  the 
time.  Now  the  curious  fact  has  already  turned  up 
that  Emerson  did  not  care  to  sip  of  this  original 
fountain  at  first  hand,  but  partook  of.  it  through 
Carlyle.  He  had  previously  called  his  author  Ger- 
manick,  indicating  manner  and  thought.  We  have 
noted  the  item  that  already  in  Boston  this  influ 
ence  had  been  transplanted  from  Germany.  Emer 
son  has  indeed  said  that  the  primordial  source  of 
his  own  world-view  lay  in  Teutonic  philosophy, 
though  he  at  times  discounted  the  statement. 


VfHE  VISIT.  117 

It  is  of  import  to  mark  that  Emerson  was  now 
thirty  years  old  and  had  not  yet  begun  his  literary 
career;  in  fact,  he  was  just  passing  out  of  his  Ap 
prenticeship.  Carlyle  was  seven  years  older  and 
more,  and  had  nearly  completed  one  stage  of  his 
total  authorship ;  he  was  beginning  to  transcend 
his  purely  German  epoch,  and  was  getting  ready  to 
flee  from  his  solitary  farm-house  to  its  opposite, 
densely  peopled  London.  On  the  other  hand  Emer 
son  was  meditating  the  reverse  way  in  his  new  life, 
intending  to  escape  from  a  populous  city  to  his  own 
farm-house  near  a  small  town.  Hence  he  questions 
the  step  of  Carlyle.  Indeed  the  two  have  already 
started  to  go  apart  in  tendency ;  as  before  said,  no 
future  work  of  Carlyle  will  ever  mean  as  much  to 
Emerson  as  did  the  Essays,  including  Sartor  Re- 
sartus,  which  in  composition  and  spirit  belongs  to 
the  author's  Craigenputtock  era. 

The  common  element  twinning  most  deeply  these 
Dioscuri  of  letters,  Emerson  has  declared  to  be  the 
moral  Sentiment,  the  immediate  effluence  of  the 
spirit,  which  each  of  them  sometim.es  but  not  always 
identified  with  God.  But  as  to  the  recipient  of  this 
power,  Emerson  believed  it  might  overflow  quite 
any  human  being,  and  thus  show  a  democratic 
equality;  but  Carlyle  believed  or  came  to  believe 
that  it  descended  upon  the  hero  only,  who  was  thus 
the  divinely  gifted  ruler,  the  inspired  autocrat 
over  the  uninspired  masses.  Hence  Emerson  ex 
pressed  his  rew  friend's  deficiency :  "My  own  feel 
ing  was  that  I  had  met  with  men  of  far  less  power 


11$      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON — PART  FIRST. 

who  had  got  greater  insight  into  religious  truth," 
namely  into  "its  universality  as  belonging  to  all  men. 
In  this  remark  we  may  also  observe  a  passing  flash 
of  the  real  attraction  which  Carlyle  exerted  over 
Emerson :  Power.  That  was  the  unique  gift  of  the 
Scotchman :  the  elemental  energy  which  poured 
itself  out  into  his  English  word.  No  writer  has 
given  utterance  to  more  absurdities,  trivialities, 
common-places,  but  the  demonic  Power  of  the  man  ! 
Hopelessly  wrong  in  thought,  the  soul  of  self-con 
tradiction,  where  can  we  find  his  equal  in  cosmic 
energy  of  speech?  No  such  mighty  hurler  of  the 
thunderous  wrord  since  Shakespeare — 'but  he  simply 
lacks  Shakespeare's  all-piercing,  all-ordering  intel 
lect.  Here  lay  Carlyle 's  chief  fascination  for  Em 
erson,  as  the  latter  has  repeatedly  hinted.  And  this 
was  and  still  remains  Carlyle 's  hold  on  literature, 
certainly  not  his  doctrine.  With  the  same  meaning 
Emerson  declares :  the  greater  power  of  Carlyle 
lies  in  his  form,  not  in  his  content. 

Emerson,  leaving  Carlyle.  is  impressed  that  the 
latter  can  give  nothing  to  him  of  creative  thought, 
of  positive  constructive  import,  But  the  fascina 
tion  remained.  So  he  exclaims,  ruminating  a  few 
days  later  at  Liverpool  while  tediously  awaiting 
good  weather  for  sailing :  l '  Ah  me  !  Mr.  Thomas 
Carlyle,  I  would  give  a  gold  pound  for  your  wise 
company  this  gloomy  evening!"  He  had  felt  that 
demonic  Power  in  the  talk  of  the  man — and  Carlyle 
manifested  his  peculiar  force  quite  as  much  in  con 
versation  as  in  waiting.  His  elemental  character 


THE  VISIT.  H9 

showed  itself  in  more  ways  than  speech — in  look, 
grimace,  in  roar  of  passion,  in  explosive  horse 
laughs.  Emerson  had  his  own  style,  his  own  unique 
color  and  rhythm  of  the  word,  but  not  this  power. 
Still  he  loved  it,  hence  his  delight  in  rude  but  force 
ful  Whitman,  which  has  caused  surprise  to  many 
of  his  admirers. 

While  delaying  at  Liverpool  for  his  vessel,  Em 
erson  takes  a  glance  backward  "through  this  Eu 
ropean  scene,  this  last  schoolroom,"  so  he  calls  it, 
of  his  Apprenticeship.  While  he  is  getting  ready 
to  step  on  "the  ship  that  steers  westward,"  not  to 
Italy  does  he  recur  or  to  the  famous  lands  and 
works ;  but  to  the  eminent  men  he  has  seen — espe 
cially  Landor,  Coleridge,  Carlyle,  Wordsworth. 
With  what  result?  I  have  been  "thereby  com 
forted  and  confirmed  in  my  convictions."  A 
stronger,  deeper  assurance  of  his  world-view  he  has 
received.  More  certain  of  himself  than  -before  he 
stands  on  his  own  footing;  indeed  that  "much- 
stressed  virtue  of  his,  called  self-reliance,  obtains 
now,  if  not  birth,  at  least  baptism  and  consecration. 
He  summons  the  great  ones  before  his  tribunal : 
"Not  one  of  these  is  a  mind  of  the  first  class."  No, 
not  one,  not  even  my  favorite  Carlyle ;  so  saith  the 
Emersonian  world-judge  now  adjudicating  their 
claims.  This  final  test  they  do  not  stand:  "espe 
cially  are  they  all  deficient — all  these  four  in  dif 
ferent  degrees,  but  all  deficient — in  insight  into  re 
ligious  truth. ' '  Such  is  the  decision  on  retrospect : 
"they  have  no  idea  of  that  species  of  moral  truth 


120       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

which  I  call  the  first  philosophy."  Note  the  last 
two  words  for  the  future,  since  they  let  us  glimpse 
a  life-long  aspiration  of  Emerson.  Still  further,  he 
here  feels  and  plainly  utters  that  this  journey  is 
for  him  the  closing  of  an  Epoch.  "I  am  very  glad 
my  traveling  is  done — too  old  to  -be  a  vagabond," 
though  certainly  not  yet  aged.  So  he  forecasts  that 
he  must  now  settle  down,  and  take  position  for  the 
coming  fight.  Is  it  not  evident  that  he  has  won  his 
viewpoint,  has  recovered  himself  and  knows  where 
he  stands?  "This  is  my  charge,  plain  and  clear, 
to  act  faithfully  upon  my  own  faith,  to  live  by  it, ' ' 
let  come  what  may.  Thus  he  has  internally  won  his 
citadel  of  freedom ;  can  he  next  make  it  an  external 
reality  ? 

Again  hear  the  strong  stress  of  his  self-reliance : 
' '  a  man  contains  all  that  is  needful  to  his  govern 
ment  within  himself, "  he  is  his  own  final  and  abso 
lute  lawgiver,  "he  is  made  a  law  unto  himself." 
The  outward  order,  the  world  of  institutions,  the 
associated  life  of  man  has  quite  sunk  out  of  his 
vision.  Such  is  the  limit  now  placed  upon  him,  the 
final  fruit  of  his  Apprenticeship.  Still  it  is  just 
this  limit  which  gives  him  his  message  and  makes 
him  the  supreme  apostle  of  the  moral  spirit  to  his 
time  and  country,  both  of  which  have  need  of  it. 
Still  it  is  not  the  whole  of  thought  or  of  conduct ;  it 
must  be  transcended,  Emerson  will  transcend  it  at 
last,  though  the  task  will  take  him  a  life-time  and 
stir  him  to  his  grandest  achievement, 

But  for  the  nonce  let  us  ponder   that    divinely 


HOME  AGAIN.  121 

freighted  aphorism  of  his,  struck  off  at  sea  (Jour 
nal,  September  9,  1833)  as  the  present  utterance  of 
his  permanent  world-view:  "The  highest  revela 
tion  is  that  God  is  in  everyman;"  thus  even  deity 
he  now  democratizes. 

VI. 

HOME  AGAIN 

In  October  1833  Emerson  reached  New  York, 
and  soon  was  in  Boston,  his  native  locality,  from 
which  he  had  started  forth  nearly  ten  months  agone. 
With  great  rapidity  he  has  skipped  over  seas  and 
lands,  and  has  drawn  a  circle  upon  the  earth  and 
upon  his  life,  into  which  he  has  crammed  much  out 
ward  experience  whereon  he  can  henceforth  rumi 
nate  and  write  at  leisure.  Restored  in  health,  con 
firmed  in  his  basic  world-view,  renovated  in  spirit, 
he  is  ready  to  take  a  fres,h  plunge  into  his  life's 
work. 

But  after  such  a  dizzying  whirl  of  external  activ 
ities,  he  must  pull  himself  together  inwardly.  The 
next  two  years  he  will  occupy  in  kneading  over  his 
gathered  materials,  and  in  recovering  at  home  what 
had  been  broken  up  and  in  part  lost  by  his  previous 
convulsion,  and  then  by  his  sudden  departure. 
Thus  the  present  triennial  Epoch,  which  is  essenti 
ally  that  of  Recovery  within  and  without,  will  be 
completed,  healing  over  the  breach  made  by  the 
previous  time  of  volcanic  eruption. 

The  first  matter  of  importance  is  that  his  voca- 


122      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

tion  be  restored.  When  he  arrived  and  looked  over 
the  field,  he  found  that  he  had  no  fixed  hold  any 
where,  he  had  nothing  to  do,  his  place  was  filled. 
He  could  not  go  back  to  his  old  position  and  be 
again  a  traditional  minister  in  some  church..  Still 
he  loved  the  speaker's  art  and  deemed  it  his  way 
of  delivering  his  message.  Accordingly  we  find  him 
giving  lectures,  wherever  he  can  get  a  chance,  on 
the  most  diverse  topics.  He  starts  at  Boston  with 
a  course  on  Natural  Science,  since  just  now  he  is 
thinking  out  and  writing  out  a  work  on  Nature. 
But  he  speaks  also  on  literature,  on  poetry,  on  his 
trip  abroad,  and  shows  much  interest  in  the  biog 
raphies  of  Great  Men,  a  future  theme.  He  will 
even  preach  a  sermon  of  his  sort  if  called  upon.  In 
such  a  scattered  way  Emerson  is  trying  to  pick  up 
and  co-ordinate  his  hitherto  dispersed  knowledge. 
Still  further,  he  is  practicing  himself  in  his  future 
calling,  he  is  establishing  the  Emersonian  Lyceum 
which  he  will  perpetuate  during  his  active  life.  Or 
we  may  say  he  is  establishing  the  University  Emer 
son,  with  himself  as  President  and  Head-Professor 
in  every  department.  Evidently  this  new  vocation 
grows  out  of  his  pulpiteering,  and  is  specially  nour 
ished  by  his  love  of  oratory. 

In  the  second  place  Emerson  feels  that  he  must 
win  his  community,  and  thus  be  restored  to  a  com 
munal  life,  which  he  will  share  and  develop  with 
its  other  members.  He  has  hitherto  lived  a  kind  of 
vagrant  existence  in  Boston  and  in  various  places 
about  the  citv.  Many  have  been  the  movings,  his 


HOME  AGAIN.  123 

own  as  well  as  those  of  his  mother's  family  from 
spot  to  spot.  But  all  that  must  now  be  stopped. 
Sometimes  he  thinks  of  flight  to  the  Maine  Woods, 
or  to  the  Berkshire  Hills.  But  at  last  he  settles 
down  in  his  Indian  Musketaquid  or  civilized  Con 
cord,  his  ancestral  community  dating  back  to  old 
Peter  Bulkley,  his  forbear  of  two  centuries,  whom 
he  eulogizes  in  an  address  of  this  time  as  "a  dis 
tinguished  minister  of  Woodhill,  Bedfordshire,  de 
scended  from  a  noble  family,  honored  for  his  own 
virtues,  his  learning  and  gifts  as  a  preacher,  and 
adding  to  his  influence  the  weight  of  a  large  es 
tate." 

Thus  the  anti-traditional  Emerson  resolves  to 
take  a  dip  backward  into  the  stream  of  domestic 
and  communal  tradition.  We  have  just  seen  how 
inclined  he  was  to  belittle  Europe's  past,  but  Con 
cord's  past  is  a  theme  for  his  superb  glorification. 
Sea-born  Venice  became  for  him  "a  most  disagree 
able  residence,"  being  to  his  sight  "a  city  for 
'beavers,"  though  he  seems  to  delight  in  the  musk- 
rats  of  the  Musketaquid.  Very  suggestive  of  his 
present  mood  is  his  "Historical  Discourse  on  the 
second  centennial  anniversary  of  Concord,"  the 
somewhat  exuberant  laudation  of  the  wee  town  on 
its  birthday,  September  12,  1835,  when  it  had 
reached  the  reverend  age  of  two  hundred  years, 
after  much  tough  fighting  of  its  people  with  Nature, 
with  the  Indians,  with  the  British,  and  somewhat 
with  one  another.  Of  this  little  Yankee  Iliad,  Em 
erson  is  the  Homer,  and  his  ancestor,  heroic  Peter 


124      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

Bulkley  is  the  divine  Achilles.  And  it  makes  an 
interesting,  heart-uplifting  epic  of  the  community. 
Still  we  can  not  help  thinking,  Is  this  the  same  Em 
erson  who  not  long  since  found  so  little  in  antique 
Italy,  and  now  finds  so  much  in  antique  Concord? 
Do  not  both  belong  to  that  transmitted  world  of  the 
past  against  which  lay  his  revolt  ?  To  be  sure,  Em 
erson  never  pretended  to  consistency,  except  per 
chance  to  be  consistent  in  his  inconsistency.  An 
tiquity  abroad  is  one  thing;  antiquity  at  home,  es 
pecially  in  the  House  of  Emerson,  is  surely  another. 
Very  delightful  it  is  to  see  him  heroize  forefatherly 
Reverend  Peter  Bulkley,  after  having  pulled  down 
the  colossal  statue  of  Julius  Caesar  and  leveled 
Rome 's  mightiest  man  with  us  the  masses,  proclaim 
ing  "A  soul  as  great  as  his  is  your  own."  So  Em 
erson  makes  us  all  tingle  with  our  new-famed 
grandeur,  and  celebrates  our  heroic  equality  with 
the  supreme  world-historical  characters  of  the  ages. 
Never  to  be  forgotten,  among  his  other  more  ex- 
hiliarating  freedoms  is  that  underlying  economic 
freedom  which  he  bears  with  him  into  his  home's 
renewal.  More  than  a  year  before  his  marriage  he 
writes  in  a  letter  to  his  brother :  ' '  The  Tucker  es 
tate  is  so  far  settled  that  I  am  sure  of  an  income  of 
about  twelve  hundred  dollars,"  which  considerable 
treasure  "will  enable  me  to  buy  a  hearth  some 
where."  Hence  it  comes  that  we  read  the  gratify 
ing  news  less  than  a  month  before  the  new  wed 
ding  day:  "I  have  dodged  the  doom  of  building 
and  have  bought  the  Coolidge  house  in  Concord, 


HOME  AGAIN.  125 

with  the  expectation  of  entering  it  next  September" 
for  the  marriage  festival.  Will  the  reader's  heart 
not  be  quickened  that  Emerson  has  now  the  solid 
cash  to  meet  this  considerable  expense,  amounting 
to  some  four  thousand  dollars  according  to  his  fig 
ures  ?  Thus  he  has  gained  his  permanent  home,  his 
Castle  of  Defiance,  where  he  will  stay  the  rest  of 
his  life.  The  Coolidge  House  is  destined  to  an  im 
mortality  imparted  by  its  occupant  and  has  become 
the  shrine  of  a  great  pilgrimage,  unique  in  its  va 
riety  of  pilgrims  and  of  their  mental  idiosyncrasies. 
Thus  Emerson  gets  settled  against  his  life 's  drift 
ing  which  has  indeed  lasted  a  good  while,  almost 
his  first  third  of  a  century.  He  will  no  longer 
stray  at  random,  more  or  less  the  sport  of  chance, 
but  he  will  henceforth  radiate  in  all  directions 
from  a  fixed  center.  Nor  must  we  forget  the  pe-. 
culiar  community  to  which  he  has  come  back  as  be 
ing  indigenous  to  its  soil  and  character.  It  is  in 
deed  a  significant  return  both  of  body  and  soul 
from  a  long  separation,  inasmuch  as  Concord  is  not 
far  from  being  the  most  traditional  town  in  the 
United  States,  having  consciously  cultivated  just 
that  faculty  to  an  unusual  degree  of  excellence.  The 
reader  will  now  glance  with  fresh  interest  over  the 
leaves  of  the  previously  mentioned  * '  Historical  Dis 
course"  of  the  returned  indigenous  Emerson,  in 
which  he  so  glorifies  his  fellow-autochthons  of  the 
venerable  community,  surely  to  their  well-merited 
happiness.  Still  the  real  aborigines,  the  Indians, 
are  absent,  except  possibly  Thoreau. 


126      KALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  FIRST. 

But  mark  the  consequence,  or  at  least  the  se 
quence  of  this  happy  communal  lovef east.  The  ora 
tor  having  made -to  his  festal  Concordites  such  a 
concordant  speech,  sets  out  at  once  to  do  another 
traditional  deed  of  even  deeper  harmony.  Two 
days  after  the  foregoing  celebration  we  read  in  his 
Journal  (September  14,  1835)  with  blank  unex- 
pectancy:  "I  was  married  to  Lydia  Jackson  "- 
where,  when,  by  whom,  not  a  word.  Not  one  custo 
mary  or  traditional  gust  of  love — this  must  be 
again  the  anti-traditional  Emerson.  A  very  un- 
glowing  statement  of  a  glowing  fact,  as  old  memory 
runs ;  so  we  search  in  his  Journal  after  a  few  warm 
words,  but  it  keeps  utterly  dumb  for  a  fortnight 
and  two  days  when  it  seems  faintly  to  whisper: 
' '  The  woods  are  all  in  a  glow ' ' — which  short  breath 
we  may  take  as  an  Emersonian  symbol  of  the 
spirit — doubtless  of  his  own  spirit. 

Seemingly  not  much  outer  ceremony  or  celebra 
tion  can  be  charged  against  that  wedding.  The 
most  alert  reader  has  hardly  expected  such  an  out 
come  to  the  rather  colorless  insertion  of  the  preced 
ing  January  23rd :  ' '  Home  again  from  Plymouth 
with  most  agreeable  recollections."  No  hint  as  to 
what  caused  so  much  pleasure.  Quite  neutral  still 
is  the  tint  of  January  30th,  which  day  "I  spent  at 
Plymouth  with  Lydia  Jackson,"  though  here  we 
catch  a  place  and  a  person.  No  poetizing  by  the 
poet  breathes  in  the  intimacy  of  his  Journal,  no 
lover  of  love  seems  this  lover.  All  of  which  bears 
profoundly  upon  the  character  of  Emerson  and  of 


RETROSPECT.  127 

his  literary  tendency,  which  we  are  seeking  to  un 
derstand. 

But  the  main  fact  is  that  Emerson  has  now  re 
turned  to  his  own  after  a  deep  and  stormy  estrange 
ment.  He  has  won  his  Recovery,  as  we  name  this 
Epoch,  having  been  restored  or  rather  having  re 
stored  himself  to  vocation,  community,  and  family, 
though  he  has  put  these  old  social  relations  upon  a 
new  and  independent  basis.  How  profound  and 
strong  runs  his  ancestral  feeling  as  he  shouts: 
"Hail  to  the  quiet  fields  of  my  fathers!"  But  at 
the  same  time  in  this  transmitted  environment  we 
hear  his  emphatic  affirmation  of  spiritual  liberty: 
"Henceforth  I  design  not  to  utter  any  poem, 
speech,  or  book  that  is  not  entirely  and  peculiarly 
my  work."  Does  not  this  unsworn  oath  to  his 
Genius  indicate  that  his  Apprenticeship  is  drawing 
to  a  close — the  long  term  of  years  which  he  has  de 
voted  to  the  appropriation  of  the  transmitted  Past  ? 
Evidently  not  a  new  Epoch  merely  but  a  new  Period 
is  knocking  at  the  door  of  his  coming  career. 

VII. 

RETROSPECT 

Our  best  reader  at  this  turning-point  of  a  long 
Period,  will  of  himself  face  about  and  glance  back 
ward  over  the  entire  stretch  of  life  through  which 
he  has  just  traveled  with  Mr.  Emerson.  Under  all 
its  draftings,  fortunes,  and  misfortunes,  it  reveals 
an  inner  order,  indeed  a  certain  unity  of  purpose 


128      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

secretly  winding  through  it  from  first  to  last,  and 
organizing  its  diverse  and  often  mutually  repellent 
masses.  Moreover  the  intimation  has  more  than 
once  been  heard  that  this  particular  Period  of  one 
life  has  its  universal  aspect  belonging  to  all  lives, 
that  Emerson's  biography,  rightly  conceived  and 
set  forth,  not  only  mirrors  human  biography  as  such 
but  contains  the  very  process  thereof  as  its  pro- 
foundest  moving-principle.  Here  too  we  are  to 
vision  all  in  the  one. 

Thus  we  have  reached  a  point  at  which  we  are  led 
to  look  backward,  but  we  must  stop  with  that.  We 
eagerly  inquire,  can  we  catch  Emerson  also  looking 
backward  from  this  same  point  and  about  this  same 
time?  A  little  hint  brings  forth  the  fact  that  on 
January  9,  1834,  he  is  deeply  pondering  over  the 
present  subject,  since  we  hear  his  searching  inquiry 
of  himself:  "What  is  it  that  interests  us  in  Biog 
raphy?"  His  answer  in  its  essence  runs  "that,  in 
the  writer's  opinion,  in  some  one  respect  this  par 
ticular  man  represented  the  idea  of  Man."  So 
there  are  representative  men  shown  in  biography : 
a  theme  which  he  will  carry  with  him  and  work  out 
many  years  later.  But  let  us  here  behold  Emerson 
viewing  human  life,  his  own  included,  and  declar 
ing  that  the  particular  form  of  it  must  have  a  uni 
versal  significance,  or  represent  ' '  the  idea  of  Man. ' ' 
Let  us  not  forget  that  about  this  date  we  see  Emer 
son  passing  a  grand  node  of  his  own  life,  from  his 
First  to  his  Second  Period,  as  we  designate  the 
transition. 


RETROSPECT.  129 

But  this  is  not  all  of  his  self-communing  just 
now  on  the  present  subject.  His  record  goes  on: 
"And  as  far  as  we  accord  with  his  (the  biogra 
pher's)  judgment,  we  take  the  picture  for  a  Stand 
ard  Man,  and  so  let  every  line  accuse  or  approve  our 
own  ways  of  thinking  and  living  by  comparison." 
(Journals  III,  p.  249.)  Two  points  are  here  noted, 
both  of  them  deeply  significant  for  Emerson's  fu 
ture.  In  the  first  place  he  announces  his  conception 
of  the  Standard  Man,  underlying,  imbreathing,  yea 
creating  all  right  Biography.  A  wonderful  glimpse 
is  that,  nothing  less  than  a  forecast  of  a  science  of 
Biography,  with  its  genetic  principle,  the  Standard 
Man,  incarnating  himself  in  the  individual  man. 
But  it  is  as  yet  only  a  glimpse,  a  prophecy,  a  far- 
off  foreview  of  the  new  kind  of  life-writing.  Just 
about  the  most  needed  thing  in  to-day's  literature 
is  this  conception  of  the  Standard  Man,  but  his  in 
ner  process  should  also  be  shown,  the  very  move 
ment  and  law  of  his  soul  as  it  embodies  itself  in  the 
events  of  the  particular  person,  through  which  as 
its  transparent  medium  it  is  to  shine  self-revealing. 
Will  Emerson  ever  make  real  his  grand  prevision, 
will  he  ever  organize  chaotic  Biography  ?  He  is  now 
entering  a  new  stage  of  his  career,  just  the  creative 
one  above  all  others.  Let  the  reader  watch  him 
with  keen  discrimination,  but  also  with  generous 
hope. 

There  is  likewise  a  second  noteworthy  thought  in 
the  above  cited  passage.  Emerson  implies  that  in 
every  written  life  which  we  read,  we  are  to  look  for 


130      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON — PART  FIRST. 

"the  picture 'of  the  Standard  Man,"  and  after  such 
a  standard  (hence  the  name)  gage  ourselves  "by 
comparison,"  accusing  or  approving  our  own  lives 
past  and  present  according  to  the  judgment.  Thus 
we  spy  Emerson  looking 'backward  from  this  moun 
tain  peak  of  existence,  and  seeking  to  get  the  trend 
and  the  purport  of  what  he  has  passed  through, 
since  he  feels  that  it  must  be  a  determining  factor 
of  what  he  is  to  become,  really  an  integrating  arc  of 
the  total  cycle  of  his  years. 

So  we  discover  at  this  transitional  line  the  retro 
spective  Emerson,  and  we  are  doing  what  he  does, 
yea  we  are  trying  to  be  wrhat  he  is.  We  also  find 
him  making  deep  studies  in  Biography  both  for  his 
lectures  and  for  himself.  The  next  year  (1835)  we 
come  upon  him  still  ruminating  over  "the  great 
value  of  Biography,"  which  shows,  regardless  of 
those  mighty  separators,  Space  and  Time,  "the  per 
fect  sympathy  between  like  minds,"  which  Emer 
son  finds  especially  in  ancient  Plutarch.  He  adds : 
"We  recognize  with  delight  a  strict  likeness  between 
their  noblest  impulses  and  our  own.  We  are  tried 
in  their  trials,  conquer  in  their  victory."  Thus 
Emerson  relives  the  lives  of  heroes,  traces  in  their 
deeds  his  own  very  soul,  discerning  and  identify 
ing  both  in  them  and  in  himself  the  Standard  Man, 
the  Universal  Person  who  individuates  his  oneness 
into  the  Many.  Still  we  have  to  beg:  Give  us,  0 
seer,  the  creative  process  of  your  .Super-Man,  reveal 
to  us  the  very  soul  of  your  Over-Soul  in  its  psych 
ical  found  as  it  manifests  itself  in  Mind  and  in 


RKTKOSPRCT.  ^g^ 

Nature.  Some  such  "First  Philosophy"  Emerson 
is  working  at  now,  and  has  been,  and  will  continue 
to  be,  as  we  often  observe  while  we  stroll  through 
the  jottings  of  his  Diary.  But  at  present  we  must 
wait  for  its  fulfilment. 

As  we  are  eager  to  peer  in  advance  whither  Em 
erson  is  tending,  we  shall  skip  a  good  many  years 
and  take  an  extract  from  his  Journal  for  Septem 
ber,  1847,  which  is  in  lino  with  our  present  theme: 
"All  'biography  is  autobiography."  So  he  under 
scores  this  pithy  aphorism  which  has  its  special 
pertinence  to  Emerson  himself,  as  we  may  observe 
in  what  follows:  "I  notice  that  the  biography  of 
each  noted  individual  is  really  at  b.st  communicated 
by  himself."  Good!  for  here  Emerson  hints  that 
Emerson's  life  must  be  finally  construed  out  of 
Emerson's  own  writings  and  sayings.  All  the 
author's  works  are  ultimately  his  confessions,  or  his 
self-revelations,  whatever  be  their  guise  or  disguise. 
But  listen  again  :  i '  The  lively  traits  of  criticism 
on  his  works  are  all  confessions,  made  by  him  from 
time  to  time  among  his  friends  and  remembered 
and  printed. ' '  Not  only  his  criticism  on  his  works, 
but  the  wrorks  themselves  are  confessions,  as  Emer 
son  declares  repeatedly  elsewhere. 

Hence  it  comes  that  we  try  to  find  in  Emerson's 
own  writings  the  various  stages  of  his  biographic 
evolution.  He  is  always  telling  on  himself,  but  we 
have  to  catch  him  at  it,  and  be  able  to  peep  under 
his  masks  of  which  he  possesses  quite  a  variety.  Un 
doubtedly  Emerson  the  author,  with  all  his  literary 


132      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  FIRST. 

fertility,  never  wrote  directly  his  autobiography, 
as  did  Goethe  and  Rousseau;  but  indirectly  he 
wrote  nothing  else.  What  he  has  written  must, 
therefore,  be  reconstrued,  condensed,  and  organized 
into  a  new  biographic  "Whole,  which  reveals  as  its 
generative  source  the  soul  of  the  Standard  Man,  as 
Emerson  names  him,  in  the  very  process  of  his 
life's  unfolding. 

And  now  the  reader,  for  his  final  edification,  we 
hope,  is  himself  to  look  backward,  and  to  trace  in 
this  First  Period  and  its  three  Epochs  not  merely 
some  external  divisions  foisted  on  the  subject  from 
the  outside,  but  the  essential  movement  of  the  Man 
himself,  the  Standard  Man,  here  individualized,  in 
his  Emersonian  wrappage  of  time  and  place.  Not 
for  the  sake  of  convenience  or  even  clarity,  or  any 
other  rhetorical  artifice  are  these  chapters  and  sec 
tions  set  down  and  even  numbered  so  emphatically ; 
they  indicate  the  inner  stages  of  the  soul's  very  ac 
tivity  which  thus  makes  its  own  divisions  or  takes 
its  own  steps  in  the  forward  sweep  of  its  native  de 
velopment.  Hence  there  is  to  be  seen  and  spiritu 
ally  appropriated  in  the  three  Epochs  of  the  present 
Period  a  necessary  soul-growth  from  within,  not  an 
arbitrary  classification  from  without.  Emerson's 
life-problem  we  may  generalize  as  his  conflict  with 
Tradition  in  its  manifold  forms,  which  evolves  of 
its  own  inherent  nature  through  the  three  stages  in 
dicated  in  the:  foregoing  Epoch.  Let  us  recall  them 
in?  simple  but  transparent  outline:  (1)  Emerson 
acquiring  Tradition  through  education  which  cul- 


RETROSPECT.  133 

minates  in  his  traditional  vocation;  (2)  Emerson 
breaking  with  Tradition  in  the  form  of  his  tradi 
tional  vocation  (the  ministry)  ;  (3)  Emerson  restor 
ing  himself  to  Tradition  (community,  family,  voca 
tion)  yet  under  changed  and  for  him  new  forms. 
In  these  three  Epochs  we  are  to  see  active  and  cre 
ative  the  soul's  own  movement,  or  Psyche's  ultimate 
round  self -generating  and  generative  (called  else- 
where  the  Psychosis).  Glimpses  of  this  basic  psy 
chical  process  we  shall  often  find  in  Emerson, 
though  he  remains  the  glimpser,  not  the  organizer. 
But  enough  of  retrospect  for  the  present;  let  us 
turn  to  prospect.  A  new  and  far  greater  Period  of 
Emerson's  career  has  dawned  and  awaits  survey, 
which  must  also  give  ultimately  its  creative  psych 
ical  process.  Now  we  may  affirm  that  Emerson's 
Apprenticeship  to  Tradition  within  the  limits  here 
tofore  laid  down  is  closed,  and  we  advance  to  his 
Second  Period  with  its  round  of  Epochs  which  re 
veals  a  still  deeper  estrangement  from  Tradition, 
and  its  corresponding  warfare  of  speech  and  action. 
In  fact,  Emerson  now  proceeds  to  universalize  that 
first  breach  of  his  with  his  church ;  he  drives  toward 
an  all-embracing  negation  of  the  past  which  has 
hitherto  trained  him  in  its  routine  of  formalism  and 
faith.  Still  he  has  his  exceptions,  he  does  not  quite 
reach  the  point  of  an  absolute  nihilism.  But  let  us 
step  over. 


The  Revolutionary  Emerson 

1835-1865 

The  Middle  Period  of  Emerson's  life  is  one  long 
protest  and  assault,  under  multitudinous  forms, 
against  the  world  prescribed  and  handed  down  to 
him  from  the  past,  especially  at  those  points  which 
limit  and  chafe  his  free  individuality.  He  takes 
pleasure  in  calling  himself  a  non-conformist,  a  dis 
senter  from  all  things  established,  a  protester  even 
against  the  transmitted  Protestantism ;  once  at  least, 
perchance  at  an  extreme  moment,  he  lauds  anarchy 
by  name.  He  also  designates  himself  as  revolu 
tionary,  and  this  word  we  have  chosen  from  a  goodly 
anthology  of  similar  self-applied  epithets,  as  his 
characteristic  title  for  the  present  Period,  which 
subtly  .connects  him  with  Concord's  famous  revolu 
tionary  deed,  as  she  "fired  the  shot  heard  round 
the  world."  So  did  he,  but  his  were  word-bullets, 

When  he  was  an  old  man  and  looked  back  at  his 
era  and  himself  in  it,  he  cited  the  well-known  apo- 

134 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  EMERSON.  135 

thegm:  "Revolutions  begin  in  the  best  heads  and 
run  steadily  down  to  the  populace."  In  this  gen 
eral  statement  he  implied  his  own  revolution,  whose 
spirit  had  percolated  far  and  wise.  To  be  sure,  it 
was  not  at  the  start  a  bloody  revolution,  though  it 
began  to  take  a  sanguinary  streak  in  John  Brown, 
whom  Emerson  defended  and  hallowed  in  name  and 
deed.  Still  we  are  not  to  forget  that  Emerson 
silently  recalled  this  utterance  of  his  concerning 
Brown  when,  after  the  Civil  War,  he  had  passed  out 
of  his  Revolutionary  Period  into  a  new  attitude 
toward  the  existent  political  order. 

The  preceding  Period  was  designated  as  Emer 
son's  Apprenticeship  to  Tradition,  with  which  he 
had  a  considerable  experience,  theoretical  and  prac 
tical.  The  result  was  for  him  a  deep  and  persistent 
hostility  passing  over  into  and  underlying  this  en 
tire  Second  Period,  whose  main  theme  will  be  his 
battle  with  Tradition  in  all  its  forms  and  every 
where,  so  far  as  he  is  conscious  of  them.  In  religion, 
in  literature,  in  social  order,  he  became  an  incisive 
critic  of  the  transmitted  dogmas  and  methods. 

Particularly  he  arraigns  man's  associated  life 
coming  down  from  the  past  in  the  shape  of  institu 
tions — Church,  State,  Economic  Order,  and  even 
the  Family.  He  seems  to  have  fallen  out  with  total 
society,  and  seeks  in  some  way  to  get  back  to  the 
purely  individual  existence,  wherein  lies  for  him  the 
only  freedom  and  the  only  civilization.  The  insti 
tuted  world,  he  holds,  is  but  an  obstacle  to  the 
soul's  highest  relation,  an  interruption  of  the  free 


136       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

communion  between  man  and  God.  To  be  sure 
Emerson  does  not  claim  to  be  always  consistent  in 
his  views,  in  fact  he  claims  to  be  inconsistent — 
every  moment  has  the  right  of  a  different  inspira 
tion  from  above.  Any  restraint  upon  that  primal 
divine  right,  as  prescribed  dogma,  ceremonial,  sys 
tem,  calls  for  the  instant  challenge  to  battle. 

It  is  evident  that  here  lies  a  great  estrangement 
of  the  individual  from  his  environing  world  of  or 
der,  and  from  the  presuppositions  of  his  own  exist 
ence.  In  this  sense  Emerson  is  a  revolutionist,  and 
his  attitude  will  last  through  the  present  Period. 
His  writing  will  be  a  critique  of  human  association, 
which  he  puts  to  the  question  in  all  its  manifesta 
tions.  During  three  decades  he  is  passing  through 
his  purgatorial  journey  which  is  one  long  spiritual 
denial  of  accepted  doctrine  and  society,  till  he 
.  works  himself  free  of  his  negation. 

I.    This  Period  can  be  conceived  to  lie  between 
two  different  Emersons,  or  between  two  supreme 
ideas  of  the  same  evolving  man,  the  one  starting 
and  the  other  closing  what  may  be  called  his  thirty 
years'  war.    The  first  Emerson  asserts  the  individ- 
.ual-man  as  the  true  and  sole  vehicle  of  the  divine 
.-.effluence ;  the  second  grants  this  power  also  to  asso- 
_;  ciated  man,  to  the  people,  to  the  masses,  with  whom 
.; he  finally  becomes  reconciled.     Between  these  two 
conceptions  move  three  decades  of  spiritual  strug 
gle — really  this  whole  Revolutionary  Period.     "Rm- 
erson  at  the  beginning  of  it  disliked  and  distrusted 
popular  government  with  its  ballot  and  crass  mill- 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  EMERSON.  137 

titude;  but  the  experience  of  the  Civil  War  made 
him  a  strong  believer  in  the  divine  "perception  that 
passes  through  thousands  as  well  as  through  one." 
Thereby  he  becomes  not  only  pacified  externally 
with  his  institutional  environment,  but  internally 
harmonized  and  unified  with  the  same  in  his  convic 
tion.  Thus  we  behold  the  Revolutionary  Emerson 
passing  into  the  Reconciled  Emerson,  or  we  may 
say,  the  Institutional  Emerson. 

This  was  indeed  a  deep-searching  human  experi 
ence,  and  it  calls  forth  the  excellence  of  Emerson 
both  in  his  writ  and  his  life.  Moreover  such  an  ex 
perience  belonged  to  his  people  and  to  his  age,  and 
is  still  a  thing  not  transcended.  To-day  the  social 
fight  continues  with  greater  intensity  than  ever, 
and  all  the  forms  of  associated  Man  are  challenged 
afresh  in  new  ways  and  with  new  weapons.  So  we 
may  see  that  Emerson's  literary  and  biographic 
value  persists  and  even  increases.  Verily  his  career 
is  remedial,  showing  how  he  got  well  of  the  time's 
deepest  malady ;  his  life,  like  every  great  and  com 
plete  life,  bears  in  it  a  vicarious  strain,  we  may 
deem  it  in  a  sense  mediatorial,  though  he  disliked 
the  word  and  its  thought  as  something  transmitted 
in  religion. 

II.  This  Second  Period,  accordingly,  we  con 
ceive  in  its  general  outline,  as  the  time  of  Emer 
son's  supreme  achievement,  of  the  fulfilment  of  his 
life's  essential  task.  He  makes  his  vocation  a  real 
ity  and  a  permanence,  so  that  it  becomes  an  endur 
ing  fact  in  the  world.  Looking  back  at  and  weigh- 


138      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

ing  his  First  Period,  in  which  he  was  substantially 
but  a  limited  individual  with  his  viewpoint  and  out 
fit,  we  may  say  that  he  in  his  Second  Period  uni 
versalizes  himself ;  that  is,  his  own  idea  he  seeks  to 
make  universal,  applying  it  to  many  subjects.  He 
seeks  also  to  impart  his  spiritual  view,  bringing  it, 
as  far  as  possible,  into  general  circulation. 

Now,  to  compass  achievement,  he  must  first  have 
the  thing  to  achieve.  Possessing  his  germinal 
thought,  he  is  to  think  it  out  fully,  for  which  work 
his  quiet  Concord  Castle  offers  a  good  opportunity. 
Elaboration  must  be  his  first  watchword.  But  even 
then  must  follow  propagation  of  his  idea,  which 
drives  the  retired  thinker  forth  from  his  Castle  into 
the  busy  world.  He  will  lecture,  write,  form  clubs, 
help  start  magazines,  and  especially  he  will  publish 
books,  if  need  be  at  his  own  expense.  Yea,  he  will 
establish  the  new  University,  the  traveling  Insti 
tute  which  he  will  call  the  Lyceum,  of  which  he  is 
Head  Professor,  going  from  town  to  town  at  call. 
In  fact,  he  opened  his  home  as  a  kind  of  school  for 
all  comers  who  were  asking  for  light.  The  result 
was  that  alongside  the  sane  seekers  all  the  crazy 
reformers  of  New  England  flocked  to  his  entertain 
ment — cranks,  bores,  monomaniacs,  who  at  last  dis 
gusted  him  and  drove  him  to  flight  (see  his  lecture 
on  New  England  Reformers). 

Thus  he  elaborates  and  propagates  the  Emer 
sonian  Idea,  making  it  actual — an  objective,  exist 
ent  fact  of  the  time.  But  then  something  better 
and  higher  he  does — he  lives  his  principle,  yea  bet- 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  EMERSON.  139 

ters  it  in  his  living  so  that  his  life  seems  greater  and 
worthier  than  his  word  spoken  or  printed  or  prop 
agated — more  ideal  than  all  his  formulated  ideal 
ism,  more  transcendent  than  his  doctrinal  Tran 
scendentalism,  greater  than  anyone  of  his  works,  or 
than  all  his  works  put  together.  In  fact  the  life  of 
the  man  is  what  has  preserved  and  eternized  his 
writings,  interpreting  and  re-creating  them  ever 
afresh  to  coming  generations. 

More  poetical  was  his  life  than  his  poetry,  though 
I  am  of  those  who  believe  that  Emerson  was  a  poet 
within  his  range.  Loftily  he  lived  an  epic,  even  if 
he  never  wrote  one,  and  seemingly  could  not.  Em 
erson  indited  Essays,  literally  tentatives — frag 
ments  of  life,  never  the  totality  of  it ;  he  possessed 
no  all-encompassing  literary  form,  the  novel  which 
is  such  at  its  best,  or  the  drama,  or  the  epic.  His 
writings  are  therefore  but  parts  or  a  part  of  him; 
his  supreme  realization  is  his  life,  and  can  only  be 
found  in  his  biography,  which  is,  therefore,  poet 
ical  and  might  be  a  poem. 

III.  Emerson 's  Middle  Period  we  call  it  also,  as 
it  runs  through  the  middle  years  of  his  career  to 
the  borderland  of  old-age.  Thus  we  seek  to  empha 
size  at  the  start  the  periodicity  of  Emerson's  life 
taken  in  its  entirety,  of  whose  cycle  we  are  now  en 
tering  the  second  grand  arc,  or  Period,  as  we  name 
it  distinctively.  For  this  portion  of  his  career 
though  it  be  but  a  stage  of  the  total  man,  has  a 
unity,  a  meaning,  and  a  process  of  its  own,  all  of 
which  must  be  seen  if  we  wish  to  grasp  aright  his 


140       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

life's  wholeness.  Moreover  the  forward-peering, 
limit-transcending  reader  should  not  fail  to  glimpse 
that  this  Second  Period  belongs  not  merely  to  the 
individual  Emerson,  but  to  all  men's  complete  pres 
entation  ;  it  is  at  last  to  be  visioned  as  a  chapter 
not  of  this  particular  biography  alone,  but  of  Uni 
versal  Biography. 

Already  it  has  been  set  forth  that  when  Emerson 
was  about  thirty-two  or  thirty-three  years  old,  a 
great  new  turn  had  gradually  insinuated  itself  into 
the  sweep  of  his  existence.  "When  he  goes  back  to 
Concord  and  becomes  permanently  settled  in  his 
domestic  and  •communal  life,  and  forever*  fixed  in 
his  world- view  or  basic  principle  of  the  Divine  Or 
der,  he  starts  on  a  fresh  stage  of  his  journey,  which, 
according  to  our  estimate,  will  last  fully  three 
decades,  and  include  quite  the  whole  range  of  his 
productive  years.  Such  is  the  general  measure  of 
the  present  Period,  whose  bounds  fore  and  aft  need 
not  be  clamped  down  to  the  exact  year,  but  which 
become  spiritually  distinct  to  the  searching  eye  of 
the  soul's  deeper  contemplation.  In  such  outline 
we  seek  to  overspan  the  activity  of  the  fully  rip 
ened  middle-aged  man,  up  to  the  brink  of  senes 
cence,  on  which  we  shall  behold  him.  standing  and 
peering  forward  and  backward,  with  the  look  of 
having  finished  his  task. 

The  first  question,  then,  to  be  asked  here,  is  this : 
What  is  the  thought  or  general  idea  of  this  Period 
as  a  whole  ?  Can  its  meaning  be  summarized  in  a 
term  or  statement  out  of  which  all  its  particulars 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  EMERSON.  \±l 

may  be  seen  unfolding?  If  it  were  possible  we 
would  like  to  set  down  in  a  word  or  two  its  germinal 
conception,  its  genetic  secret  which  is  to  reveal 
itself  in  what  follows.  Already  we  have  given 
some  indications  on  this  line;  we  may  add  one  or 
two  more. 

IV.  The  protest  which  we  have  noticed  hitherto 
in  Emerson's  career  (First  Period),  as  active,  but 
more  or  less  implicit,  is  now  to  be  made  fully  ex 
plicit  ;  the  potential  of  his  Apprenticeship  is  to  ex 
pand  into  the  real.  The  as  yet  unexpressed  denial 
in  his  soul  has  to  find  expression,  adequate  expres 
sion  both  in  deed  and  in  word.  The  transmitted 
heritage  of  conventions,  social  beliefs,  religious 
dogmas  he  refuses  to  accept  and  will  cast  out  as  the 
time's  and  his  own  very  devil.  "We  have  already 
noted  how  deep  is  his  alienation  from  the  realm  of 
tradition,  especially  as  regards  religion  which  is 
truly  the  starting-point  of  his  Heaven-defying  re 
cusancy.  That  former  explosion  of  his  which  cast 
him  out  of  his  inherited  vocation  and  hurled  him 
across  the  ocean  to  Europe  for  recovery,  has  still 
left  its  scars,  if  not  its  wounds;  the  volcano  will 
abate  its  sudden  fitful  violence,  but  continues  its 
steady  more  massive  eruption,  over  a  wider  and 
wider  territory  till  it  finally  embraces  quite  the 
whole  constituted  order  of  man.  With  his  own  con 
sent  we  name  this  Period  the  Revolutionary  Emer 
son,  for  it  is  one  of  his  own  designations,  and  be 
longs  to  his  ancestral  environment. 

Deeply  separative  it  is,  really  the  deepest  sepa- 


142       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

ration  and  estrangement  of  his  career,  just  the  sep 
arative  stage  of  the  man's  spiritual  existence.  He 
is  now  in  thought  the  negation  of  all  associated  life, 
which,  he  deems,  must  be  sacrificed  for  the  salva 
tion  of  the  moral  individual  life.  He  rather  likes 
at  times  to  assume  the  daring  names  of  heresiarch, 
revolutionist,  even  anarchist.  His  separative  tend 
ency  often  turned  him  to  a  separation  from  the  con 
crete  in  favor  of  the  abstract  in  word  and  in  spirit 
— such  as  Virtue  (see  his  Essays  and  their  titles). 
From  the  personal  he  would  turn  to  the  impersonal, 
as  in  the  case  of  Love.  "To  go  without"  was  one 
of  his  favorite  mottoes;  he  praised  and  practiced 
aloofness  and  solitariness.  His  body  looked  an  ab 
straction;  later  in  life  his  face  became  almost  im 
personal,  and  even  his  mind. 

Y.  "We  have  said  a  good  deal  about  the  dissent 
ing,  militant,  negative  Emerson,  the  thinker  of  the 
time's  protest  and  the  campaigner  for  its  propaga 
tion.  Undoubtedly  this  is  the  phase  of  his  activity 
which  determines  his  present  Period.  Hence  its  or 
ganization  must  reveal  itself  after  its  strongest, 
most  decisive  principle.  This  we  have  sought  al 
ready  to  present. 

But  we  are  not  to  neglect  the  fact  that  there  runs 
a  pervasive  resisting  countercurrent  in  Emerson, 
which  may  be  called  his  affirmative  strain,  in  oppo 
sition  to  his  more  commanding  negative  part.  The 
attentive  reader  can  always  hear  his  Yes,  though 
it  be  not  so  loud  nor  so  shocking  as  his  No.  Thus 
he  has  his  constructive  task  which  indeed  underlies 


THE  RE  VOLUTIONARY  EMERSON.  143 

all  his  opposition.  This  is  seen  in  the  stress  which 
he  puts  upon  the  direct  downflow  of  divinity  into 
the  recipient  human  soul;  inspiration  from  above 
is  ever  his  central  creative  urge.  Herein  he  was 
positive,  doctrinal,  yea,  even  dogmatic,  though  the 
quick  antagonist  of  every  other  kind  of  dogmatism. 
He  proscribes  all  prescription,  and  such  proscrip 
tion  becomes  his  own  ever-recurring  prescription. 
He  is  the  preacher  from  the  one  ultimate  text, 
which  is  his  own ;  of  other  texts  he  is  the  iconoclast. 
It  has  been  already  suggested  that  this  long 
Period  cf  thirty  years  can  be  divided  into  three 
decennial  Epochs  without  forcing  it  into  any  for 
eign  foregone  scheme  of  arrangement.  Of  course 
such  a  division  is  not  to  be  vindicated  in  advance ; 
its  validity  must  be  proved  at  the  close,  when  all 
the  evidence  has  come  in  and  is  surveyable.  The 
subject  must  divide  and  arrange  itself  in  these  three 
parts  after  its  own  natural  evolution.  Here,  then, 
are  the  three  Epochs  of  this  Second  Period  set 
down  beforehand  in  a  brief  abstract  summary. 

I.  The    Creative    Decennium. —  Emerson    the 
Transcendentalist  in  his  primal  originality,  which 
is  in  the  main  a  critique  of  the  established  or  the 
institutional  world.     Negative  chiefly,  yet  with  a 
positive  substrate. 

II.  The  Re-actionary  Decennium. — Emerson  in 
a  state  of  self -scission  which  criticises  his  critique; 
having  fallen  out  with  himself  and  his  own,  he 
seeks  to  transcend  his  former  limits.     His  flight 


144       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

both  spatial  and  spiritual,  marked  specially  by  his 
second  trip  to  Europe. 

III.  The  Practical  Decennium. — Emerson  re 
turns,  and  passes  from  his  theoretical  negation,  par 
ticularly  of  the  State,  to  his  active  or  practical  nega 
tion  thereof,  which,  however,  he  finally  overcomes 
through  the  time 's  school  of  the  Civil  War. 

Very  meagre  is  such  an  outline,  no  more  than  a 
sign-board  of  direction ;  still  it  may  indicate  the 
process  of  a  great  soul  during  the  central  and 
active  portion  of  a  life-time.  It  glimpses  Emerson 
in  his  long  discipline  of  denial,  which  gainsays  the 
universal  order  of  things  as  transmitted,  till  he  tri 
umphs  over  his  denial.  This  Second  Period  is  not 
laid  down  in  any  one  or  two  books  of  his ;  its  mean 
ing  and  movement  must  be  caught  from  all  his 
writings  and  doings,  in  fine  from  his  life  as  a 
whole.  Moreover  what  he  achieved  by  his  career  is 
contained  essentially  in  the  present  Period,  which 
is  his  time  of  self-realization,  though  it  has  a  before 
and  an  after.  He  now  thinks  himself  out  and  pub 
lishes  himself  in  print  and  speech ;  he  elaborates 
and  delivers  his  message. 

But  thirty  years  make  a  long  stretch  and  cannot 
all  be  of  equal  importance ;  their  concentration  and 
genetic  energy  are  fused  into  one  Epoch  which  is 
next  to  be  considered. 


CHAPTER  FOURTH 

THE  CREATIVE  DECENNIUM  (1835-1845) 

Let  it  be  emphasized  that  this  is  the  most  creat 
ive  Epoch  of  Emerson's  most  creative  Period.  It 
embraces  his  supremely  original  works,  or,  in  the 
highest  sense  of  the  word,  his  only  original  works, 
from  which  to  a  greater  or  less  degree,  the  later 
ones  are  derivative.  Also  his  outer  activities  of  the 
present  Epoch  are  the  most  creative  of  his  entire 
life ;  his  deeds  show  a  genetic  energy  which  draws 
the  main  practical  lines  on  which  hereafter  will 
unfold  his  career.  Both  his  Intellect  and  his  Will 
now  drive  at  the  topmost  speed  and  excellence  of 
their  creative  power,  so  that  we  stand  amazed  at  the 
quantity  as  well  as  the  quality  of  his  performance. 
If  the  epic  of  Emerson  could  be  written,  this  would 
be  the  heroic  portion  of  his  life,  which  we  might 
call  the  Emersoniad. 

Thus  we  seek  to  stress  and  to  mark  off  the  ten 
years  which  drive  mightily  between  1835  and  1845, 
designating  the  whole  as  the  Creative  Decennium 
of  the  author.  It  lies  just  about  in  the  middle  of 
the  sum  total  of  his  years,  as  he  lived  SQmewhat 
more  than  seven  decades,  this  decade  being  the 
fourth.  Of  course  there  is  no  intention  of  making 
these  annual  bounds  absolutely  rigid,  for  they  are 
not;  they  are  designed  to  suggest  the  soul-limit 

145 


146      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

rather  than  the  time-limit  of  the  man's  stages.  So 
let  their  margins  >way  liither  and  thither  in  a  kind 
of  elastic  resilience  responsive  to  the  spirit's  epochal 
movement.  Still  they  trace  iii  their  wavering  out 
lines  a  determinate  and  characteristic  phase  of  Em 
erson's  total  life-work,  and  are  necesesary  to  mark 
the  joints  of  its  organism.  During  this  time  he 
elaborates,  expresses  in  writing,  and  publishes  to 
the  world  his  most  distinctive  message,  both  as  to 
its  form  and  its  content.  Moreover  this  Epoch  finds 
him  at  the  highest  maturity  of  his  middle-age,  say 
from  his  thirty-third  to  his  forty-third  year. 

A  special  name  has  been  given  to  this  time  and 
its  peculiar  doctrine — Transcendentalism.  So  this 
is  Emerson 's  distinctive  Transcendental  Epoch  in 
its  rise,  flowering,  and  decline ;  and  from  him  as  the 
fountain  this  movement  overflowed  into  the  rest  of 
the  world  and  into  the  future.  The  creative  source 
of  the  new  illumination  lay  in  the  present  decen 
nial  Epoch  of  Emerson.  It  may  be  deemed  the  cen 
tral  luminary  which  irradiates  his  entire  biography, 
somewhat  after  the  manner  of  his  doctrine  of  the 
divine  effluence. 

On  the  whole,  the  time  favored  the  meditation  of 
the  retired  student  or  the  scholar,  as  Emerson  often 
names  his  own  personality.  The  anti-slavery  excite 
ment  over  the  enactment  of  the  Missouri  Compro 
mise  had  subsided,  while  that  of  the  Annexation  of 
Texas  had  not  yet  begun.  The  Nation  was  in  a 
state  of  quiescence,  if  not  somnolence;  no  really 
pivotal  question  agitated  deeply  the  people,  and  the 


THE  CREATIVE  DECENNTUM.  147 

personal  character  of  the  two  Presidents  during 
these  years,  Van  Buren  and  Tyler,  was  not  of  the 
strongest.  No  great  historical  issues  arose  to  call 
Emerson  out  of  himself ;  even  Europe  lay  quiet  be 
calmed  between  the  revolutionary  outbursts  of  1830 
and  of  1848.  Also  the  religious  upheaval  of  New 
England  had  rather  spent  itself.  A  good  time  for 
introversion  and  undisturbed  self-communion  was 
this  Transcendental  Decennium.  But  we  shall  find 
that  some  years  after  this  Epoch  Emerson  will  be 
deflected  into  the  pressing  practical  interests  of  his 
country  and  of  his  age,  passing  out  of  his  present 
dominantly  theoretical  attitude. 

Moreover,  the  time  was  getting  ready  to  hear 
Emerson's  evangel  for  another  reason.  The  estab 
lished  order  in  Church  and  State  had  fallen  stag 
nant  and  even  malodorous,  was  becoming  demoral 
ized,  yea  immoralized,  the  clog  instead  of  the  sup 
port  of  human  development.  Upon  such  a  cancer 
ous  carcass  of  prescription  was  drawn  Emerson's 
keen  dissecting  blade  to  let  the  gathered  poison 
out.  This,  to  be  sure,  was  only  a  negative  service, 
but  surgically  necessary  for  renovation.  "We  shall 
often  take  note  of  Emerson's  sharp  critique  of  in 
stitutions,  temporarily  needful  but  eternally  one 
sided,  and  hence  itself  needing  a  critique.  But  it 
should  never  be  forgotten  that  Emerson  in  the  end, 
with  the  aid  of  a  new  order,  rescued  himself  from 
the  backstroke  of  his  own  negation — a  great  feat  in 
any  mortal,  and  for  his  readers  the  highest  ex 
ample. 


148       RALPH  WALDO  EMER80K--PART  SECOND. 

As  this  Epoch  is  the  most  original  of  Emerson's 
life,  it  is  also  the  most  prolific,  as  well  as  most  di 
versified  in  its  kinds  of  work.  Never  again  will  his 
activity  show  itself  so  colossal  and  varied,  never 
again  will  he  do  so  great  things  and  so  many  great 
things  together.  He  lectures,  edits,  publishes,  cor 
responds,  takes  notes,  poetizes,  writes  much  prose 
and  manifold,  entertains — what  does  he  not  do? 
And  on  the  whole  everything  done- is  at  his  highest. 
The  result  is  the  contemplation  of  the  man  becomes 
a  mind-stretching  as  well  as  a  heart-exalting  em 
ployment.  His  personality  rises  to  its  culmination, 
as  distinct  from  his  works ;  we  gaze  and  wonder  at 
him  in  his  epochal  sunburst,  as  he  scatters  his  radi 
ance  over  the  ways  in  all  directions.  His  whole  life 
can  be  regarded  as  one  continuous  emanation  of 
light,  which  has  its  luminous  concentration  in  the 
present  Epoch.  We  may  well  conceive  Emerson's 
career  to  have  this  intense  point  of-  effulgence,  which 
fitly  illustrates  his  cardinal  doctrine  of  the  spirit's 
effluence  from  above  into  the  soul.  Thus  his  world- 
view  determines  even  the  form  of  his  biography. 

Emanative  we  may,  accordingly,  deem  Emerson 
in  character  as  well  as  in  production.  Without 
question  this  native  bent  of  him  will  assist  in  ex 
plaining  his  decided  drift  toward  the  Orient  and 
its  poetry,  though  he  belongs  to  the  Occident  also. 
Hardly  could  he  help  being  moulded  by  his  own 
deepest  faith;  all  life  and  expressly  his  own  life 
was  an  outflow  of  the  one  central  energy,  which 
ultimate  fact  of  it  must  be  made  manifest  in  its 


THE  CREATIVE  DECENNWM.  149 

record.  One  other  consequence  should  be  noted: 
the  power  of  the  luminary  grows  less  and  less  the 
farther  it  is  emanated  from  its  burning  center 
towards  the  bounds  of  its  existence.  We  shall  in 
like  manner  have  to  observe  concerning  Emerson 
a  continual  dimunition  in  creative  energy  till  it 
becomes  quite  extinct  while  he  yet  lives.  His  sun- 
like  originality  seems  to  stream  out  from  this  cen 
tral  Epoch,  ever-dimming  on  its  way  deathward. 
Hereafter  we  shall  find  him  largely  repeating  or 
varying  or  recreating  this  his  primal  Creative  Ep 
och  in  its  spiritual  essence  as  well  as  in  its  literary 
form.  Accordingly  all  his  future  career  is  to  get 
its  light  from  this  solar  Decennium. 

Finally  we  have  to  speak  of  the  difficulty  of  or 
dering  this  Epoch  with  its  enormous  diversity  and 
subtlety.  Its  very  diffusion  makes  it  seem  confusion, 
which  is  increased  by  its  frequent  sudden  leaps 
from  topic  to  topic.  Here  then  lies  the  hardest  test 
for  the  writer  as  well  as  for  the  reader :  how  shall 
we  put  into  tractable  shape  this  huge  refractory 
mass  of  material,  a  very  mixed  conglomerate  at 
first  sight  to  the  outer  eye  and  inner  reason.  A 
chronological  itemizing  will  certainly  not  bring  the 
light  we  want.  Somehow  we  must  so  construe  it 
that  the  soul  will  shine  through  the  body,  or  the 
organization  be  made  transparent  to  its  spirit. 

A  carefully  measured  outlook  over  the  total  field 
will  bring  to  vision  three  lines  running  parallel  as 
it  were,  and  dividing  the  Decennium  into  three  dis 
tinct  strips  or  tracts  each  of  which  is  ten  years 


150      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

long.  A  division  lengthwise  by  topics  rather  than 
crosswise  by  times  we  are  to  conceive,  which  we  shall 
letter  and  label  as  follows,  for  better  clarity  we 
hope. 

Section  A.  Productivity.  The  Idea,  Transcen 
dentalism,  shaped  into  completed  utterance ;  the 
literary  product  of  Emerson  at  its  best.  The  tri 
umph  of  his  Intellect. 

Section  B.  Propagation.  The  Idea  promulgated 
through  various  instrumentalities  which  have  their 
center  in  Emerson.  The  triumph  of  his  Will. 

Section  C.  Origination.  The  Idea  in  its  earliest, 
most  immediate  forms  of  utterance — the  literary 
embryology  of  Emerson,  his  protoplasmic  forms  of 
expression. 

Such  are  the  three  main  themes  of  this  the  most 
important  Epoch  of  Emerson's  life,  which  Epoch, 
we  must  keep  in  mind,  is  the  starter  of  his  Second 
Period  embracing  the  inner  germinal  substance  of 
his  achievement.  Thus  we  seek  in  advance  to  indi 
cate  the  chief  joints  or  sections  of  this  intricate  and 
peculiar  organism  of  a  life,  well  knowing  that  such 
anatomy  is  repellent  to  some  readers,  though  indis 
pensable  to  any  final  knowledge  of  the  subject.  And 
we  may  be  permitted  again  to  enforce  the  point  that 
the  content  of  the  present  Epoch  is  vaster,  more 
complicated  and  more  creative  than  all  the  rest  of 
Emerson's  career  put  together.  Let  it  be  empha 
sized  in  short  that  this  is  the  most  creative  Epoch 
of  the  most  creative  Period  of  Emerson 's  entire  life. 


Section  A.    Productivity 

Under  this  head  is  included  the  Emersonian  lit 
erature  of  the  present  Epoch  in  its  finished  and 
more  permanent  forms.  These  are  principally  the 
Essay  and  the  Address  or  Oration,  not  to  speak  of 
articles,  reviews,  and  other  temporary  efforts.  His 
poetry  we  shall  place  under  a  different  category,  as 
well  as  certain  other  important  but  more  primary 
and  embryonic  writings. 

Here  we  are  to  find  and  to  appropriate  the  eter 
nal  Emerson,  the  part  of  him  most  excellent,  which 
has  lasted  and  is  going  to  last — Emerson  as  he 
supremely  was,  is,  and  will  continue  to  be.  Today 
we  commune  with  his  spirit  through  his  written 
word  which  won  its  sovereign  character  in  this  cre 
ative  Decennium  of  all  his  years,  and  which  has 
been  handed  down  to  us  with  a  new  increment  of  in 
fluence  long  after  he  has  passed  away.  In  the  pres 
ent  section  we  are  to  come  into  participation  not 
only  with  the  immortal  but  the  immortalizing  por 
tion  of  the  man.  This  one  enduring  part  of  him  is 
what  makes  him  endure  in  every  part,  inbuing  the 
same  with  its  own  regenerative  energy. 

In  the  considerable  list  of  his  works  now  to  be 
considered,  we  are  to  trace  the  stages  of  his  world- 
view,  to  mark  his  spiritual  evolution,  in  fine  to  write 
his  psychical  biography.  These  ten  years  are  by  no 
means  all  alike,  nor  are  their  productions  alike; 

151 


152       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

they  show  a  gradual  transformation  in  thought, 
mood,  and  manner — a  budding,  blooming  and 
drooping'  of  zeal — the  rise,  culmination  and  decline 
of  the  original  idea  in  its  originator. 

Repeatedly  this  Idea  has  been  mentioned  in  a 
passing  way,  though  it  be  the  as  yet  unseen  Prime- 
Mover  of  the  whole  undertaking.  The  justly  inquis 
itive  reader  must  have  queried  over  the  same :  what 
is  it — whose — whence  ?  And  the  specific  name  of 
this  Prime-Mover  has  been  already  announced  sev 
eral  times  in  a  desultory  fashion — Transcendental 
ism.  This  somewhat  elusive  and  shifty,  yet  cen 
tral  vocable  is  first  to  be  considered  in  its  origin, 
meaning,  and  influence. 

I. 

TRANSCENDENTALISM 

The  cardinal  word  of  Emerson  and  of  Emerson's 
doctrine,  and  of  Emerson's  followers  for  this 
Epoch :  it  rises  up  the  initial  mountainous  difficulty 
with  which  his  thought-searching  student  has  to 
grapple.  First  let  it  be  said  that  it  is  doubtless 
Emerson's  own  designation  of  his  own  idea,  even  if 
he  found,  as  he  says,  the  term  already  in  German 
Philosophy.  "We  catch  an  early  glimpse  of  its  ex 
istence  hinted  in  a  letter  to  Carlyle,  dated  March 
12,  1835,  in  which  Emerson  speaks  of  The  Tran 
scendent alist,  the  name  of  a  new  journal  about  to 
be  started,  in  which  he  has  evidently  a  good  deal  of 
interest.  Moreover  a  kind  of  Transcendental  Club 


TRANSCENDENTALISM. 


composed  of  a  group  of  young  men,  of  whom  he 
seems  to  be  the  disguised  motive-power,  peeps  out 
modestly  in  the  same  letter. 

Thus  we  may  infer  that  Emerson  already  in  the 

beginning  of  this  his  Creative  Epoch  had  found  the 

suggestive  name,  or  the  distinctive  category  which 

was  to  cleave  to  his  work  as  well  as  to  his  person 

ality  in  the  time  to  come.    The  name  has  turned  out 

a  hitting  one  and  of  happy  fortune  which  has  never 

lapsed  in  spite  of  some  opposition  and  even  obloquy. 

It  is  Emerson's  word  for  Emersonianism,  for  the 

new  Idea  which  he  had  conceived  and  which  he 

would  now  set  forth  to  the  world    in    deed     and 

speech.    To  be  sure  Emerson  was  never  quite  ready 

to  acknowledge  the  paternity  of  the  label,  even  to 

his  nearest  friends  and  followers.    One  of  the  earli 

est  of  these  is  Dr.  F.  H.  Hedge  who  writes  :    t  (  How 

the  name  Transcendental  originated,  I  cannot  say. 

It  certainly  was  never  assumed  by  the  persons  so 

called."    Yet  Emerson  seems  to  have  used  it  before 

anybody  else,  and  to  have  been  quite  familiar  with 

it,  since  it  rises  to  the  surface  in  another  early  let 

ter  of  his  to  Carlyle  (April  30,  1835)  which  alludes 

again  to  a  projected  Journal,  or  perchance  "a  book 

to  be  called  The  Transcendentalist.  "    Its  editor  is 

to  be  this  same  Doctor  Hedge,  who  says  of  himself  : 

"I  was  the  only  one  (of  the  group)  who  had  any 

first-hand  acquaintance  with  German  Transcenden 

tal  Philosophy  r.t  the  start."     Still    he    disclaims 

authorship  of  the  name  or  any  knowledge  of  the  au 

thor.      That  must  have1    been    Emerson's     closely 


154       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

guarded  secret — a  wise  precaution  on  his  part,  we 
may  well  reflect. 

Nevertheless  the  term  itself  was  not  original  with 
Emerson,  who  has  given  himself  unusual  trouble  to 
tell  us  whence  it  was  derived:  ''The  Idealism  of 
the  present  day  acquired  the  name  of  Transcenden 
tal  from  the  use  of  that  term  by  Immanuel  Kant, 
of  Koenigsberg,  who  replied  to  the  skeptical  philos 
ophy  of  Locke."  This  states  the  source  as  well  as 
the  ground  of  its  adoption.  The  same  passage  runs 
on:  "The  extraordinary  profoundness  and  pre 
cision  of  that  man's  (Kant's)  thinking  have  given 
vogue  to  his  nomenclature,  in  Europe  and  America, 
to  that  extent  that  whatever  belongs  to  intuitive 
thought  is  popularly  called  at  the  present  day  Tran 
scendental"  (Emerson's  lecture  on  The  Transcen 
dent  alist  read  in  January,  18-12,  hence  some  seven 
years  after  the  movement  had  started) . 

Thus  Emerson,  looking  backward  to  the  origin 
and  scope  of  his  fertile  idea  when  it  had  gathered 
great  force,  connects  it  with  the  German  philosoph 
ical  thought  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  in  its  reac 
tion  against  the  sensism  of  Locke  and  his  followers. 
Moreover  in  this  same  lecture  the  new  doctrine  is 
explained  as  "the  tendency  to  respect  intuitions 
and  to  give  them,  at  least  in  our  creed,  all  authority 
over  our  experience."  Furthermore  in  the  first 
sentence  it  is  emphasized  that  this  new  doctrine  is 
"not  new  but  the  very  oldest  of  thoughts  cast  into 
the  mould  of  these  new  times, ' '  being  really  the  old 
Idealism  reaching  back  to  Plato,  yet  "Idealism  as 


TRANSCF1NDKNTALISM. 


it  appears  in  1842''  at  Boston.  So  Emerson,  in  a 
prescriptive  mcod  not  always  his,  seeks  to  connect 
his  spiritual  child  with  the  past  and  to  make  it  a 
development  out  of  foregone  philosophies,  espe 
cially  the  German.  Still  it  is  by  no  means  a  mere 
repetition  or  imitation,  but  an  evolution,  which  in 
deed  underlies  the  '  unconscious  Emerson  every 
where,  and  at  times  breaks  up  into  conscious  utter 
ance,  whereof  a  well  known  instance  peeps  out  pro 
phetically  in  the  lines: 

And,  striving  to  be  man,  the  worm 
Mounts  through  all  the  spires  of  form. 

It  is,  however,  our  opinion  that  Emerson  in  the 
foregoing  account,  which  is  historically  true 
enough,  though  not  wholly  flawless,  has  not  re 
vealed  the  source  whence  he  himself  derived  the 
wrord  and  the  idea  of  Transcendentalism,  for  which 
he  was  indeed  ready  and  even  groping.  He  doubt 
less  heard  the  doctrine  and  its  name  for  the  first 
time  from  Carlyle  when  he  paid  the  latter  his  visit 
already  recounted,  though  ho  remained  silent  about 
this  fact.  And  we  shall  often  find  out  that  Emer 
son  had  his  peculiar  reticences  on  pivotal  matters, 
for  reasons  which  he  kept  very  private.  But  as  this 
point  relates  to  the  spiritual  genesis  of  Emerson's 
work,  it  may  be  a  little  further  expanded. 

In  an  early  passage  of  Sartor  Resartus  (Book  I, 
Ch.  4),  Carlyle,  in  describing  Teuf  elsdrockh  's  many 
startling  spontaneities,  regards  them  as  possibly 
having  their  "second  source  in  his  Transcendental 


156       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

Philosophies,"  with  which  is  also  connected  his 
' '  humor  of  looking  at  all  Matter  and  material  things 
as  Spirit " ;  in  which  citations  may  be  found  the 
word  as  well  as  a  hint  of  its  Emersonian  meaning. 
In  fact  Teufelsdrockh  can  well  be  taken  as  the  first 
and  germinal  Transcendentalist.  Sartor  Resartus 
was  printed  by  instalments  in  Eraser's  Magazine, 
starting  November,  1833,  with  the  first  four  chap 
ters.  It  must  have  been  read  to  Emerson  during 
the  latter 's  visit  with  Carlyle  at  Craigenputtock  in 
August,  1833,  for  it  had  already  been  written  and 
made  into  a  book  rejected  of  publishers.  Really 
Carlyle  could  hardly  help  reading  to  his  appreci 
ative  guest  salient  extracts  from  his  greatest  crea 
tion,  and  talking  about  its  idea,  as  he  thumbed  the 
precious  manuscript.  And  Jane  Carlyle  at  his  side 
would  surely  have  prompted  him  if  he  had  neg 
lected  aught,  for  this  she  declared  to  be  her  dar 
ling  's  ' '  work  of  genius,  dear. ' '  What  else  had  they 
to  talk  about  during  that  long  stretch  of  a  day  and 
more  ?  And  what  but  the  new  idea  could  have  made 
such  a  lasting  and  creative  impression  upon  Emer 
son?  -Still  he  has  not  recorded  this  truly  genetic 
impartation  in  either  of  his  two  printed  accounts 
of  the  visit. 

Let  us  here  take  note  that  Emerson  did  not  fail 
to  signify,  usually  in  his  placid  manner,  that  there 
was  a  negative,  defiant,  fighting  side  to  his  Tran 
scendentalism,  which  he  would  stress  in  his  martial 
mood.  The  enemy  whom  it  everywhere  scented  with 
a  blood-hound's  keenness,  and  whom  it  would  dial- 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  ^57 

lenge  on  the  spot  was  Tradition,  anathema  to  its 
infernality.  Characteristically  opposite  to  the  pre 
ceding  German  derivation  of  his  idea  is  Emerson's 

reply  to  an  inquirer:    "I  told  Mr. that  he 

need  not  consult  the  Germans  but  if  he  wished  at 
any  time  to  know  what  the  Transcendentalists  be 
lieved,  he  might  simply  omit  what  in  his  own  mind 
he  added  from  Tradition,  and  the  rest  would  be 
Transcendentalism."  To  be  sure,  Emerson  never 
carried  out  his  doctrine  to  the  extreme  intimated  in 
his  statement;  there  remained  in  his  nature,  after 
all  his  eliminations  of  what  had  been  transmitted 
to  him,  a  deep  substrate  of  traditional  beliefs,  mostly 
unconscious,  but  often  identified  and  even  vaunted. 
He  gloried  in  his  inherited  Puritanic  conscious 
ness,  especially  as  regards  its  morality,  though 
he  rejected  its  dogmatic  element.  And  in  the  unlit 
underworld  of  his  soul  were  stored  volumes  of 
ancient  prescription  whose  pages  he  seemed  not  to 
read  aloud  or  at  least  not  to  express  in  writ.  That 
Concord  community,  so  dear  to  him,  was  largely  a 
transmitted  thing,  inside  him  and  outside.  Such 
in  fact  was  the  substructure  of  his  whole  activity, 
whose  superstructure,  however,  was  a  strongly  for 
tified  citadel  reared  against  the  instituted  order  as 
handed  down  from  the  fathers.  The  Transcen- 
dentalist  would  exclude  everything  externally  trans 
mitted  or  prescribed ;  no  outer  mediate  descent  into 
the  soul  is  allowed,  only  the  inner  immediate  efflu 
ence,  that  of  deity  himself. 

Though  Emerson  denies  and  defies  the  principle 


158      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART 


of  authority,  he  hardly  gets  rid  of  it  in  his  doctrine 
but  transfers  it,  that  is  v  he  shifts  the  seat  of  au 
thority  from  Tradition  to  Intuition,  and  stresses  th-* 
individual  more,  than  the  institution.     Thus  the  re-" 
calcitrant  has  his  place  of  submission,  if  not  of  ser 
vility.    The  iconoclast  of  induction,  he  turns  idola 
ter  of  instinct,  through  which  alone  God  reveals 
himself.    The  soul  is  to  be  obedient,  receptive,  sub 
ject  to  the  divine  effluence,  whose  dictation  is  final 
and  without  question.     Thus  Emerson  turns  back 
to  the  Oriental  consciousness,  and  becomes  the  mod 
ern  theocrat,  born  of  Puritanism  on  our  Western 
Continent.    No  wonder  that  he  reverts  so  much  to 
Persia  and  India  for  his  spiritual  comfort  and  in 
spiration.    There  runs  through  him  a  line  of  return 
from  the  Occident  to  the  Orient,  even  from  democ 
racy  to  absolutism.     Emerson  was  not  in  harmony 
with    the    American    polity    during    his    Creative 
Epoch,  though  in  later  years  he  became  more  rec 
onciled.     To  be  sure  he  affirmed  strongly  the  side 
of  individual  judgment  and  initiative,  but  he  shied 
at  individual  association  in  the  form  of  the  State 
and  other  Institutions.     The  atom  he  uplifted  and 
glorified,  but  the  organized  body  composed  of  atoms 
lay  not  in  his  interest,  perchance  not  distinctly  in 
his  vision,  at  least  not  during  his  Creative  Epoch. 
Moses  and  the  Prophets  in  old  Judea  received  God's 
message  directly  ;  why  should  not  I,  Emerson,  now 
do  the  same  in  New  England  without  their  words' 
interposition,  but  imitating  them  just  in  their  su 
preme  act?     Commune  not  with  their  evangel  as 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  159 

final,  but  reach  back  to  the  source  of  it  and  tap  that 
in  thine  own  right  for  slaking  thy  soul's  thirst. 
Here  lies  the  reason  in  part  why  Emerson  was  influ 
enced  to  such  a  small  degree  ostensibly  by  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures,  though  in  doctrine  at  his  deep 
est  he  was  their  offspring. 

This  sovereign  Spirit  Emerson  postulates :  he  did 
not  undertake  to  say,  how  it  came  down  into  the 
human  soul,  nor  when,  nor  where.  Nor  did  he  try 
to  elaborate  the  conditions  under  which  the  soul 
received  the  divine  message ;  it  seemed  rather  pas 
sively  to  register  the  upper  decree.  Indeed  we  can 
not  always  tell  whether  he  deemed  this  original 
Energy  as  coming  from  without  or  from  within — 
is  it  his  own  Ego  or  another  Power  impinging  up 
on  the  same  ?  The  Transcendentalist  is  inclined  to 
see  ' '  the  facts  you  call  the  world  as  flowing  perpet 
ually  outward  from  an  invisible  unsounded  center 
in  himself,  center  alike  of  him  and  of  them,"  and 
hence  as  having  "a  subjective  existence."  Thus  he 
would  seem  at  times  to  make  deity  essentially  in 
ternal,  yet  not  always;  his  idealism  takes  often  a 
dart  toward  Fichte  or  Berkeley,  and  then  stops  or 
turns  back.  Emerson,  while  eschewing  all  system 
or  dogma  in  the  matter,  appears  to  hover  between  a 
distinct  subjective  and  an  indistinct  objective  God. 

Hence  it  comes  that  Transcendentalism  can  have 
no  organized  form,  its  record  being  that  of  the 
day's  direct  inspiration.  It  is  the  soul's  diary  of 
the  moment 's  downflow  from  deity,  whereof  the  ex 
ample  may  be  noted  in  Emerson's  Journal, .the  mo- 


160      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

mentary  emanations  of  his  Ego,  which  are  the  ele 
mental  ever-jetting  fountain  of  all  his  writings, 
whose  ultimate  drops  never  quite  coalesce  or  grow 
organic  even  in  the  finished  product.  Accordingly, 
Transcendentalism  is  not  a  philosophy,  though  it 
philosophizes,  not  a  religion,  though  it  religionizes, 
not  a  psychology,  though  it  psychologizes.  It  dis 
dains  all  system,  or  rather  its  system  drives  forward 
to  be  unsystematic.  From  this  angle  it  shows  a  de 
cidedly  negative  bent,  and  bespeaks  itself  a  child  of 
the  revolutionary  Eighteenth  Century,  whose  push 
was  also  to  assail  and  to  overturn  the  ordered  world 
as  transmitted  to  it  from  the  past.  Thus  Emerson 
brought  a  phase  of  the  French  Revolution,  as  well 
as  of  the  American,  into  quiet  New  England,  and 
whelmed  the  Puritan  against  Puritanism.  The  rig 
orous  faith  of  the  fathers  (or  faithers)  is  under 
mined,  the  other-worldliness  is  transmuted  to  a 
this-worldly  outlook,  and  even  the  transcendent 
God  becomes  immanent,  if  not  wholly  subjective, 
being  made  the  vehicle  of  the  individual's  worth, 
but  hardly  now  its  sole  supreme  end,  as  of  yore. 

Such  is  the  decisive,  we  may  say,  genetic  principle 
in  Emerson's  world- view — the  unobstructed  efflux 
of  the  Divine  Spirit  into  man,  the  descent  of  the 
Over-Soul  into  the  human  soul.  This  central  con 
ception  is  the  primal  source  as  well  as  impulse  of 
his  creativity,  which  will  push  him  to  a  thousand 
fold  application  and  utterance  of  itself  in  speech, 
writ,  and  in  life. 

Still  it  would  not  be  out  of  place  to  call  Emer- 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  KJ-J 

son  in  his  religious  aspect  a  theocrat,  who  partakes 
of  and  is  governed  by  the  direct  inspiration  of  God 
from  above  against  all  human  law  and  institution, 
as  well  as  against  all  doctrine  of  every  kind  trans 
mitted  from  the  past.  On  this  side  we  have  to 
think  of  him,  with  that  whole  Puritanic  inheritance . 
of  his  consciousness  seething  through  him,  as  an 
evolution  of  the  original  Hebrew  God-conscious 
ness  so  deeply  indwelling  the  spirit  of  his  long  cler 
ical  ancestry.  He  could  be  inspired  as  well  as  Isa 
iah,  for  it  is  the  inspiration  in  itself  purely,  which 
is  divine  and  universal,  not  so  much  the  particular 
word  or  thing.  Moreover  Emerson's  own  verbal 
message,  which  he  has  to  impart,  will  also  undergo 
the  fate  of  the  old  prophet,  and  become  a  prescrip 
tion  to  his  faithful  apostolate,  who  in  turn  will 
have  to  learn  through  Emerson  to  transcend  Emer 
son,  just  as  he  transcended  his  spirit's  origin,  and 
is  to  be  imitated  with  his  own  imitation  by  his  .fol 
lowers  at  their  best.  Thus  Emerson's  doctrine  of 
Transcendentalism  bears  in  itself  the  push  to  be 
come  self-transcending  if  not  self-undoing — an  un 
conscious  irony  lurks  in  his  writ,  which  time  will 
make  aware. 

But  the  lasting  fact  about  Transcendentalism  was 
its  pervasive  and  persistent  impress  upon  its  time, 
especially  its  power  over  the  New  England 
mind.  Dizzily  rapid  was  its  sweep  from  effluence 
to  influence,  from  the  inner  overflow  to  the  outer, 
and  just  therewith  unprescribed  Transcendental 
ism  became  a  prescription,  its  very  denial  of  tradi- 


162       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON — PART  SECOND. 

tion  turned  traditional  in  a  kind  of  self -opposition, 
which  in  time  Emerson  himself  will  feel  and  humor 
ously  lament,  But  at  the  start  it  wrought  as  a 
mighty  but  subtle  force,  leavening  the  minds  even 
of  its  enemies.  To  be  \sure,  it  spread  out  to  mat- 
.ters  and  assertions  far  beyond  the  intention  'of  its 
founder ;  Emerson  himself  drew  sharp  lines  against 
some  of  its  interpretations.  But  even  when  misun 
derstood  or  rather  the  more  ft  was  misunderstood, 
the  more  it  produced  a  ferment.  We  can  trace  its 
effects  even  on  those  who  were  least  willing  to  ac 
knowledge  its  power  and  on  many  who  knew  not 
what  had  hold  of  themselves.  Some  of  its  more 
manifest  results  we  may  set  down. 

The  most  striking  as  well  as  the  most  permanent 
result  of  Transcendentalism  is  seen  in  Literature. 
It  dominates  Emerson's  supremely  distinctive  Pe 
riod,  as  well  as  his  supremely  distinctive  work — his 
Essays.  From  him  as  a  center  it  overflowed  in 
many  directions  and  permeated  the  Epoch's  spirit 
ual  utterance.  His  style  was  imitated,  his  manner 
as  well  as  his  mannerism  struck  root  and  grew.  The 
New  England  preacher  would  clothe  his  orthodoxy 
in  an  Emersonian  vestment.  Especially  it  culti 
vated  the  ideal  or  poetic  side  of  life.  Still  it  pro 
duced  no  poem  of  supreme  rank,  primarily  because 
it  did  not  furnish  the  theme  for  such  a  work  which 
must  be  national  first  and  thence  rise  to  be  univer 
sal.  But  Transcendentalism  was  essentially  pro 
vincial,  not  even  national ;  it  had  the  New  England, 
limit  upon  it,  wherever  it  might  pass.  If  not  wholly 


TRANKCENDENTA  LTXM.  -|  (53 

denying  it  minimized  the  part  of  mediation  in  the 
universal  order;  but  every  world-poem,  or  sover 
eign  work  of  art,  is  mediatorial,  we  may  say,  even 
vicarious. 

Another  wide-spread  result  of  Transcendental 
ism  was  what  we  may  emphasize  as  the  Flight — tin- 
estrangement  of  the  individual  from  his  social  en 
vironment  and  his  escape  to  the  woods  or  to  primi 
tive  life.  A  profound  dissatisfaction  with  the  es 
tablished  order  seized  the  Yankee  heart,  which  was 
an  original  deep-seated  trait  of  the  Puritan  and 
caused  his  primal  flight  to  America  from  England, 
and  then  to  the  wilds  of  the  West,  The  political 
situation  of  the  time  both  in  the  State  and  the  Na 
tion  intensified  the  feeling.  Emerson  began  his 
career  by  such  a  flight  to  Concord,  and  held  his 
Castle  of  Defiance  to  the  end.  The  Puritanic  con 
sciousness  has  an  original  taint  of  fault-finding 
with  the  world  and  its  ordering,  and  herein  Emer 
son  does  not  fail  to  voice  his  people.  Still  he  never 
quite  broke  and  fled  to  the  woods,  though  he  threat 
ened  it  several  times  and  lived  on  the  edge  of  Wai- 
den,  and  not  so  very  far  from  P>rook  Farm.  But 
the  great  exponent  and  literary  protagonist  of  the 
Transcendental  Flight  was  Thoreau,  Emerson's 
friend,  and  to  a  degree  imitator,  though  with  a 
stout  character  of  his  own. 

Another  far-famed  and  significant  result  was  the 
new  Transcendental  Community,  which  was  its  de 
termined  practical  endeavor.  For  the  Flight  was 
after  all  only  a  protest,  a  denial,  a  negation ;  but  to 


164      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

build  up  the  social  order  afresh  from  the  bottom 
was  a  decided  affirmation.  Thus  it  was  acknowl 
edged  that  man  must  associate  and  construct  out 
of  himself  a  social  system ;  but  the  old  way  of  hu 
man  association,  largely  left  to  chance  and  instinct, 
must  be  remodeled  by  rational  foresight.  Here  the 
pattern  was  mainly  the  premeditated  structure  of 
the  Frenchman  Fourier.  Emerson  held  aloof 
from  this  last  consequence  of  his  doctrine,  indicat 
ing  a  trait  in  him  otherwise  notable.  He  left  this 
part  of  the  program  to  be  carried  out  chiefly  by  an 
other  friend  of  his,  A.  Bronson  Alcott,  a  man  al 
ways  ready  to  march  to  the  last  ditch,  but  never 
quite  ready  to  die  there,  whose  ideal  community 
went  to  pieces  several  times,  though  he  always  es 
caped  with  his  life  to  tell  the  story.  Moreover,  Em 
erson's  real  flight  was  to  Concord,  perchance  the 
germinal  model,  from  which  spot  he  would  not  stir 
after  his  first  homing.  It  must  be  confessed  that 
Alcott  had  more  of  the  hero  in  him  than  Emerson, 
who  was  a  great  darer  in  word  but  not  so  much  in 
deed. 

Another  characteristic  of  Transcendentalism  has 
been  its  genetic  energy  in  producting  new  forms  of 
itself,  different  indeed  yet  with  salient  strains  of 
its  parentage.  The  so-called  Christian  Science 
with  its  wild-fire  propagation  from  the  chief  Tran 
scendental  center,  Boston,  despite  denials  of  Mother 
Eddy,  shows  no  superficial  likeness  to  Father  Em 
erson,  one  of  whose  most  smiting  spiritual  charac 
teristics  was  the  undervaluation,  if  riot  quite  elim- 


TRANSCENDENTALISM.  165 

ination  of  the  Negative  in  man  and  even  in  God. 
Evil,  ill,  and  the  world  generally  is  the  grand  illu 
sion,  which  is  to  be  cured  by  the  new  knowledge. 
As  we  read  in  its  book,  or  listen  to  its  exposition 
from  adepts,  we  cannot  help  muttering  low  to  our 
selves:  Yes,  in  this  household  Emerson  is  the  un 
obtrusive,  perchance  unacknowledged  father,  while 
Madam  is.  the  trumpet-voiced  mother  prolific  be 
yond  computation,  and  gifted  with  a  marvelous 
talent  for  organizing  her  globe-girt  crusade — alto 
gether  the  greatest  popularisation  of  the  more  eso 
teric  Transcendental  doctrine. 

Nor  must  we  forget  the  second  considerable  shoot 
of  Transcendentalism,  budding  from  the  same  orig 
inal  center  and  ramifying  far  and  wide  over  the 
world.  This  is  known  as  Pragmatism,  whose  puta 
tive  founder  was  C.  S.  Peirce  of  Harvard,  but 
whose  chief  and  world-famous  promulgator  was 
Professor  William  James  of  the  same  seat  of  learn 
ing.  The  Pragmatic  germ  with  its  full  contradic 
tion  may  be  noted  already  in  the  original  Transcen 
dental  Club,  which  was  declared  to  be  a  Club  of  the 
like-minded,  as  no  two  of  them  were  minded  alike. 
Only  today  a  skillful  exponent  declared  he  knew  of 
twenty  different  kinds  of  Pragmatism;  he  might 
have  raised  his  figure  to  twenty  hundred,  one  for 
every  Pragmatist,  as  it  is  not  Pragmatic  to  follow 
any  formula  of  Pragmatism.  Emerson  himself  in 
his  first  book  shows  the  budding  doctrine  in  his  ex 
hortation:  "Build,  therefore,  your  own  world.  As 
fast  as  you  conform  your  life  to  the  pure  idea  in 


166      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

your  mind,  that  will  unfold  its  grand  proportions. 9 ' 
This  and  similar  things,  we  find  in  Emerson's  earli 
est  book,  that  on  Nature,  and  like  sermonic  exhor 
tations  were  vigorously  preached  along  his  whole 
active  career.  Such  pointed  sentential  stimulation 
to  self -construction  undoubtedly  has  its  tonic  value 
for  every  person ;  but  it  also  contains  the  bud  which 
flowers  into  doctrinal  Pragmatism,  though  this 
seems  to  deny  all  doctrine,  and  then  to  deny  its  de 
nial.  All  of  which  can  find  its  suggestion  in  Emer 
son. 

And  now  we  are  to  watch  Transcendentalism  ad 
vancing  to  the  spiritual  mastery  of  the  world  outer 
and  inner  through  the  work  of  its  founder,  who 
starts  with  Nature  as  the  first  of  the  triple  round 
of  the  Universe,  which  is  composed  of  Nature, 
Man,  and  God. 

IL 

NATURE  is  TRANSCENDENTAL 

Such  is  the  pithy  aphorism  which  utters  a  very 
deep  and  lasting  phasis  of  the  Emersonian  con 
sciousness:  Nature  is  transcendental.  Already 
we  have  noted  repeatedly  Emerson's  bent  toward 
Nature;  at  Paris  we  saw  how  he  turned  away  from 
a  great  literary  revolution,  in  a  push  of  instinct 
toward  the  incoming  scientific  evolution.  His  per 
manent  trend  may  be  caught  in  the  following  decla 
ration  :  ' '  From  whatver  side  we  look  at  Nature  we 
seem  to  be  exploring  the  figure  of  a  disguised  man." 


NATURE  IS  TRANSCENDENTAL.  167 

Thus  the  First  Mind  is  revealed  in  its  outer  visible 
form,  descending  primarily  from  above  into  the 
Human  Mind  which  beholds  itself  in  Nature  as  the 
"disguised  Man"  or  Ego.  Nor  should  we  fail  to 
note  that  Emerson,  the  thinker,  here  has  a  kind  of 
background  to  his  thought,  namely  the  great  trin 
ity  of  the  universe — God,  Nature,  Man — with  a 
faint  intimation  of  their  mutual  relationship  or 
perchance  of  their  process  with  one  another.  It  is 
indeed  but  a  glimpse,  and  that  is  Emerson — the 
glimpser. 

But  now  we  must  advance  to  Emerson's  first 
book,  that  on  Nature,  published  in  1836 — his  first 
spiritual  child,  and  the  earliest  offspring  of  Tran 
scendentalism,  unless  we  reckon  Carlyle  's  Sartor  in 
the  genetic  line.  The  starting-point  of  Emerson  is, 
then,  ' '  the  -disguised  Man, ' '  primal  efflux  of  deity, 
and  hence  for  him  '  *  the  apparition  of  God. ' ' 

"Nature  is  transcendental,"  exclaims  Emerson 
setting  forth  in  a,  lecture  the  doctrine  of  himself  as 
Transcendentalist.  It  would  seem  that  Nature  was 
the  first  avenue  of  approach  to  his  new  philosophy. 
Thus  it  is  the  subject  of  his  opening  literary  per 
formance,  of  his  first  book.  "Nature  is  transcen 
dental,  exists  primarily,  necessarily,  ever  works 
and  advances,  yet  takes  no  thought  for  tomorrow." 
It  acts  immediately  and  instinctively,  without 
"thought  for  tomorrow."  Man,  too,  at  his  highest 
has  wrought  in  the  same  way ;  ' '  genius  and  virtue 
predict  in  man  the  same  absence  of  private  ends, 
and  of  condescension  to  circumstances 


168      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

in  the  process  of  Nature.  Here  Emerson  shows  his 
aversion  to  the  mediated,  reflective,  purposed,  and 
reveals  his  bent  toward  the  unconscious,  immediate, 
spontaneous,  as  is  seen  in  the  natural  world. 

The  motto  to  the  first  edition  of  his  book  was 
taken  from  Plotinus,  and  contained  the  following 
abrupt  jet:  "Nature  being  a  thing  which  doth 
only  do,  but  not  know" — wherein  lies  Emerson's 
deepest  tie  of  sympathy  with  her  in  this  earlier 
stage  of  his  thought.  But  thirteen  years  later 
(1849)  in  his  second  edition  of  Nature,  he  substi 
tuted  a  second  motto  in  verse  which  contains  the 
famous  evolutionary  image  of  the  worm  "striving 
to  be  man,"  and  in  the  effort  rising  "through  all 
the  spires  of  form. ' 7  Wherein  we  may  see  Emer 
son  himself  evolving  into  Evolution  some  ten  years 
before  the  publication  of  Darwin's  Origin  of  Spe 
cies.  Still  he  had  already  felt  Evolution  in  a  stroll 
at  Paris  through  the  Jardin  des  Plant es :  "I  feel 
the  Centipede  in  me — cayman,  casp,  eagle  and  fox. ' ' 
He  finds  in  every  form  of  Nature,  however  gro 
tesque  or  savage,  a  secret  affinity  with  himself — ' '  an 
occult  relation  between  the  very  scorpions  and 
man."  Thus  he  forecasts  the  Darwinian  Descent 
of  Man,  and  in  his  enthusiasm  of  vision  he  shouts : 
"I  am  moved  by  strange  sympathies"  with  all  cre 
ation,  "I  say  continually,  I  will  be  a  naturalist," 
which,  however,  he  could  not.  (See  the  striking 
upburst  in  his  Diary,  under  date  of  July  13.  1833.) 

In  this  presentimental  gleam  Emerson  was  a  kind 
of  Darwinist  before  Darwin,  echoing  indeed  a 


NATURE  18  TRANSCENDENTAL.  -jgg 

mighty  propulsion  of  the  time.  Herein  he  bears  an 
analogy  to  the  poet  Goethe,  who  reveals  many  evo 
lutionary  pulsations  both  in  prose  and  verse;  in 
deed  his  Faust  may  be  deemed  the  great  poem  of 
Evolution,  which  especially  takes  form  in  the  nu 
merous  transmutations  of  Mephistopheles.  Tenny 
son  also  showed  an  occasional  push  from  this  spirit 
of  the  time,  in  spite  of  his  Anglican  conservatism. 
Emerson  may  have  derived  his  idea  from  the 
Frenchman  Lamarck  whose  doctrine  held  more  to 
the  inner  appetency  of  lower  organisms  ''striving 
to  be  man,"  than  to  the  Darwinian  Natural  Selec 
tion,  or  the  pure  struggle  for  existence.  Emerson's 
kind  of  evolution  was  more  the  intuitive,  hardly 
the  inductive  or  scientific,  nor  yet  the  more  recent 
creative  evolution  of  Bergson. 

But  that  which  chiefly  drew  Emerson's  eye  to 
Nature  was  his  seeing  in  it  the  downflow  '  *  of  that 
ineffable  Essence  which  we  call  Spirit,"  whereby 
we  can  commune  with  "God  in  the  coarse  and  dis 
tant  phenomena  of  matter."  Hence  the  true  de 
scription  of  Nature  is  the  poetic,  for  this  manifests 
"the  great  shadow  pointing  always  to  the  sun  be 
hind  us."  To  be  sure  the  doubt  will  enter  whether 
there  is  any  reality  to  this  shadowy  appearance  be 
fore  us;  still  the  hopeful  philosopher  cries  out: 
"the  world  is  a  divine  dream  from  which  we  may 
presently  awake  to  the  glories  and  certainties  of 
day."  For  Nature  is  to  Emerson  the  grandest  of 
all  ghosts,  being  just  "the  apparition  of  God." 

Nature's  ever-flowing  creative  spontaneity  capti- 


170     RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

vated  Emerson,  being  so  like  himself  in  his  germi 
nal  faith,  and  resembling  the  genetic  downpour  of 
his  genius  from  its  divine  fountain-head.  He  quite 
personified  Nature  as  the  original  Transcendental-' 
ist,  who  brings  forth  in  rich  productivity  her  mar 
velous  works  of  power  and  beauty.  He  would  fall 
into  her  generative  mood  by  taking  a  walk  through 
his  field  and  wood-lot,  and  receive  her  inspiration 
to  "efflux"  his  prose  and  verse.  For  her  sake  he 
became  a  farmer,  not  to  feed  his  body  but  his  spirit. 
Thus  he  tapped  Nature  in  her  genesis,  and  thrilled 
with  her  ecstacy  of  creation.  Nature  was  the  inter 
mediary  of  his  genius  with  divinity,  even  if  he  was 
in  other  respects  inclined  to  look  askance  at  all 
forms  of  mediation  with  the  Highest. 

The  chief  interest  of  this  first  creative  book  of 
Emerson  is  that  it  shows  his  earliest  attempt  to 
formulate  his  world-view,  what  he  often  calls  his 
Prima  Philosophia,  making  Nature  the  reveal er,  or 
.the  artist  picturing  to  man  the  upper  ideal  realm  of 
the  universe.  In  the  book  lurks  also  that  peculiar 
struggle  or  dualism  of  the  Emersonial  Genius  be 
tween  poetry  and  philosophy,  both  being  equally 
aspired  for,  but  often  getting  mutually  entangled. 
On  the  other  hand  it  is  certain  that  with  him  philos 
ophy  had  a  push  or  appetency  for  something  be 
yond  itself,  so  that  he  is  '"'looking  for  the  new 
Teacher"  who  will  be  able  to  make  present  limits 
"come  full  circle" — that  circular  form  being  to  his 
vision  the  final  one.  Moreover  such  new  Teacher 
"shall  see  the  world  to  be  the  mirror  of  the  soul," 


NATURE  IS  TRANSCENDENTAL.  171 

that  is,  shall  behold  it  as  ultimately  psychical — 
which  indicates  another  aspiration,  and  perchance 
ambition  of  the  Emersonian  spirit,  often  expressed 
but  unfulfilled.  What  haunts  the  poet-philosopher 
everywhere  is  that  the  laws  of  our  moral  or  spiritual 
nature  "answer  the  laws  of  matter  as  face  to  face 
in  a  glass."  But  this  belief  remains  with  him  an 
insight,  an  intuition,  an  immediate  downburst  of 
the  primal  creative  energy,  and  never  unfolds  into 
a  reasoned,  interrelated  order. 

Nature  is,  accordingly,  ' '  the  figure  of  a  disguised 
Man"  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other,  "the 
noblest  ministry  of  Nature  is  to  stand  as  the  appa 
rition  of  God."  Thus  the  primary  constituents  of 
the  Universe — Nature,  Man,  God — are  sought  to  be 
united  in  a  common  thought  or  process,  embracing 
the  All.  It  is  Emerson's  vastest  reach,  or  indeed 
the  vastest  outstretch  of  the  Human  Mind,  as  this 
seeks  to  discover  and  formulate  its  place  in. the 
Supreme  Order.  From  the  same  paragraph  (See 
Nature,  Section  VIII)  an  additional  citation  should 
multiply  the  light:  "It  (Nature)  is  the  organ 
through  which  the  universal  spirit  (God)  speaks  to 
the  individual  (Man)  and  strives  to  leal  back  the 
individual  to  it,"  that  is,  to  the  universal  spirit. 
Again  we  note  the  same  triple  rov^id  of  the.  Uni 
verse  (God,  Nature, -Man),  with  tlie  added  purpose 
of  Nature  in  the  same:  it  is  t\e  remedial,  restora 
tive,  we  may  say,  mediatorial  element  of  all  Crea 
tion  whose  function  or  striving  is  to  lead  estranged 
Man  back  to  his  Create?.  In  such  a  view,  we  have 


172      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  SECOND. 

> 

to  see  that  Nature  for  Emerson  has  largely  taken 
the  place  of  the  Christ  in  the  Christian  conception 
of  the  Divine  Order. 

So  Emerson  starts  his  career  of  creative  author 
ship  with  the  idea  that  Nature  is  transcendental, 
elevating  it  from  its  former  state  of  damnation  in 
the  religious  view  of  the  world,  to  being  a  medium 
of  salvation  for  man,  through  revealing  to  him  the 
image  of  his  deity.  That  this  trinity  of  God,  Na 
ture,  and  Man  is  itself  a  psychical  process,  is  indeed 
just  the  Psyche  of  the  Universe,  or  the  Soul  of  the 
All  (Pampsychosis)  lies  not  explicitly  in  Emer 
son's  vision,  even  if  he  glimpsed  it  intuitively,  as 
was  his  way. 

III. 

MAN  is  TRANSCENDENTAL 

Thus  we  may  mark  with  some  emphasis  the  next 
significant  stage  in  Emerson's  evolution,  as  he  has 
set  it  down  in  writing.  He  now  mounts  up  to  the 
vision  as  well  as  to  the  utterance  of  Man's  tran 
scendental  portion,  as  distinct  from  that  of  Nature 
which  has  just  preceded.  The  new  doctrine  is  con 
tained  in  three  Orations  or  Addresses  given  to  Aca 
demic  audiences  within,  the  same  year  (1837-8). 
hence  not  very  long  after  the  publication  of  his 
book  on  Nature.  These  compositions  show  the  au 
thor  taking  a  fresh  step  in  his  career,  and  together 
they  are  seen  at  bottom  to  have  a  common  meaning, 
as  hinted  in  the  foregoing  caption.  They  may  be 


MAN  IS  TRANSCENDENTAL.  173 

specially  designated  as  Emerson's  First  Oratorical 
Triad,  for  there  will  be  a  second. 

The  three  Addresses,  all  of  of  them  phases  or 
parts  of  one  supreme  subject  or  mental  experience, 
are  found  in  Emerson's  Works  with  these  designa 
tions  : 

1st — The  -American  Scholar,  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
Oration,  Cambridge,  August  31,  1837.  Emerson's 
own  sub-title  is  Man  Thinking  (of  course  transcen- 
dentally). 

2nd — The  Divinity  Class  Address.  Cambridge, 
July  15,  1838.  The  emphasis  is  upon  Man  Preach 
ing  (of  course  transcendentally). 

3rd — Literary  Ethics.  Oration  before  the  Liter 
ary  Societies  of  Dartmouth  College,  July  24,  1838. 
It  deals  especially  with  the  writer,  or  Man  Writing 
(of  course  transcendentally). 

Here,  then,  we  are  to  listen  to  Emerson  discours 
ing  upon  three  different  intellectual  types  of  men, 
more  deeply  upon  himself,  however,  in  this  three 
fold  phasis  of  his  spiritual  development.  These 
types  are  Thinker,  Preacher,  Writer;  or,  in  more 
exalted  Emersonian  phraseology  we  may  call  them 
the  Philosopher,  the  Priest,  the  Poet,  all  of  them 
distinct  embodiments  of  Emerson's  own  intellec 
tual  activities.  Hence  these  Addresses  belong  to  his 
biography;  or,  i:i  their  ultimate  purport,  they  are 
documents  autobiographical.  Emerson  was  now 
hovering  toward  and  around  thirty-five  years  old; 
so  he  announces  in  the  last  Address:  "I  have 
reached  the  middle  age  of  man:"  or  as  Dante  puts 


174      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  SECOND. 

it,  "in  the  middle  of -the  journey  of  our  life,"  which 
at  this  point  turns  down  the  road  toward  three  score 
and  ten. 

The  common  theme  underlying  all  these  Orations, 
accordingly,  is  Man  as  transcendental,  since  he 
must  tap  the  divine  source  himself  and  in  himself 
for  his  thought,  for  his  sermon,  for  his  writ — re 
jecting  tradition  and  following  inspiration.  Inter 
woven  with  the  fundamental  idea  are  numerous  ap 
plications,  allusions,  eloquent  excursions,  which  give 
variety  and  also  power  to  these  discourses.  This 
common  theme  Emerson  repeats  under  many  forms ; 
let  us  take  the  following  for  the  nonce  :  ' ( The  con 
dition  of  our  incarnation  in  a  private  Self  seems  to 
be  a  perpetual  tendency  to  prefer  the  private  law, 
to  obey  the  impulse,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  law  of 
universal  Being. "  Here  Emerson  summons  before 
himself  the  primordial  thought  of  individuation, 
' '  our  incarnation  in  a  prevate  Self, ' '  as  opposed  to, 
yet  derived  from  "universal  Being,"  to  which  man 
is  to  return  for  participation  or  indeed  re-creation. 
This  is  what  makes  him  truly  mighty  and  worthy, 
for  "the  hero  is  great  by  means  of  the  predomi 
nance  of  the  universal  nature ;  he  has  only  to  open 
his  mouth  and  it  speaks;  he  has  only  to  be  forced 
to  act  and  it  acts."  Thus  the  universal  spirit  ac 
tive  is  to  be  tapped  and  sluiced  down  into  the  in 
dividual  spirit  passive,  which  thence  obtains  its 
heroship,  its  transcendental  power  and  fulfilment. 

Accordingly,  it  becomes  of  supreme  importance  to 
the  man  thinking,  preaching,  writing,  that  he  brings 


MAN  TS  TRANSCENDENTAL.  175 

himself  into  close  communion  with  this  supernal 
creative  source,  and  let  its  genetic  energy  stream 
over  into  his  individual  productivity.  These  three 
Addresses  are  guiding  lines  to  such  an  end.  And 
the  first  question  asked  here  by  the  prying  reader 
is  this:  does  our  human  speaker  Emerson  now  in 
these  discourses  draw  from  the  eternal  fountain- 
head  in  telling  how  to  do  it  ?  Our  decided  opinion 
is  that  he  meets  the  requirement.  Emerson,  giving 
instruction  to  be  heroic,  becomes  in  the  act  the 
hero  himself,  and  exemplifies  his  own  doctrine.  We 
may  fairly  say  that  he  shows  himself  to  be  philoso 
pher,  priest,  poet  in  describing  what  they  are,  and 
how  they  get  to  be. 

So  much  by  way  of  preface  to  this  oratorical  sun 
rise  of  the  sky-mounting  Emerson,  with  hints  of 
its  general  purport  and  place  in  his  Life-Essay.  It 
may  well  be  deemed  a  forecast  of  himself  in  the  main 
currents  of  his  career.  "While  the  Addresses  have 
a  common  idea  and  also  structure,  each  of  them  has 
its  own  distinct  theme  and  character,  as  well  as 
style  and  mood.  Their  separate  points  are  worthy 
of  a  brief  examination. 

I.  The  American  Scholar.  This  was  a  New  Eng 
land  favorite,  as  indicated  by  the  praises  of  Lowell 
and  others.  It  has  a  touch  of  Yankee  vanity,  not 
obtrusive,  and  certainly '  not  disagreeable.  Dr. 
Holmes,  in  his  life  of  Emerson  has  called  it  "our 
intellectual  Declaration  of  Independence/'  which 
term  hits  off  one  of  its  traits.  In  fact  some  fifty 
years  and  more  after  the  political  Revolution,  Em- 


176      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

erson  heralds  the  spiritual  Revolution  of  America, 
and  herein  becomes  the  new  Thomas  Jefferson, 
though  he  had  fore-runners.  In  the  first  paragraph 
Emerson  proclaims:  "Our  day  of  dependence,  our 
long  apprenticeship  to  the  learning  of  other  lands, 
draws  to  a  close.  We  cannot  always  be  fed  on  the 
sere  remains  of  foreign  harvests."  Thus  the  title 
of  the  oration,  The  American  S&kolar,  as  liberated 
from  the  European,  is  already  a  challenge. 

Still  this  is  but  its  polemical  or  negative  side, 
and  it  has  a  decidedly  positive  strain,  in  fact  sev 
eral  of  them.*  The  basic  theme  is  the  return  of  the 
individual  from  "the  divided  or  social  state"  in 
which  he  now  finds  himself,  to  "the  original  unit, 
the  fountain  of  power"  from  which  he  sprang,  that 
he  may  drink  again  of  his  first  creative  energy. 
This  original  "One  Man,"  primordial  father  of  all 
particular  men,  Emerson  calls  up  before  us  in  im 
age  and  fable,  to  indicate  that  to  which  "the  indi 
vidual  must  sometimes  return  from  his  own  labor, ' ' 
that  he  replenish  and  renew  his  divinely  creative 
spirit. 

But  how  is  this  return  to  be  made  by  "the  vic 
tim  of  society,"  and  its  traditions?  Here  lies  the 
function  of  the  Scholar  as  Emerson  conceives  him, 
or  Man  Thinking.  In  the  first  place  this  Thinker 
must  look  deep  into  Nature  and  see  in  her  "the 
circular  power  always  returning  into  itself."  More 
over  just  herein  Nature  "resembles  his  own  spirit," 
and  so  it  comes  that  "its  laws  are  the  laws  of  his 
own  mind. ' '  Surely  this  is  the  cry  for  a  Psychology 


MAN  18  TRANSCENDENTAL.  177 

of  Nature,  in  which  is  to  be  shown  the  imprint  of 
mind  upon  every  physical  phenomenon,  great  and 
small.  We  feel  like  shouting  to  the  aspiring  Em 
erson,  with  his  active  life  still  before  him :  Do  that; 
0  Thinker,  organize  Nature  and  all  her  facts  and 
laws  psychically,  and  you  will  create  a  new  science 
quite  unknown  to  Europe.  Did  he  do  it?  Not  to 
our  knowledge ;  in  this  field  too  he  remains  Emer 
son  the  glimpser,  the  stimulator,  the  prophet,  not 
a  world-organizer,  though  he  proclaims  everywhere 
the  vision  of  the  same.  But  within  his  limits  he  is 
of  the  worthiest  and  greatest. 

The  second  great  influence  which  comes  pouring 
into  the  mind  of  the  Scholar  from  the  outside  is  the 
Past  in  the  form  of  "literature,  art,  institutions." 
Great  is  the  Book,  but  it  has  a  very  insidious  peril: 
"the  sacredness  which  attaches  to  the  act  of  crea 
tion — the  act  of  thought — is  transferred  to  the  rec 
ord."  Hence  the  letter  killeth:  the  danger  of 
script  is  prescription.  The  function  of  genius  is 
to  create :  * '  if  the  man  create  not,  the  pure  efflux  ' 
of  the  Deity  is  not  his."  Use  your  own  creative 
moments  creatively;  when  you  "can  read  God  di 
rectly,  the  hour  is  too  precious  to  be  wasted  in  other 
men's  transcripts."  A  peep  we  may  deem  this  into 
Emerson's  sanctum  where  he  seizes  first  his  Diary 
to  transcribe  God  directly.  He  also  emphasizes  the 
supreme  way  of  reading:  "One  must  be  an  in 
ventor  to  read  well.  There  is  creative  reading  as 
well  as  writing."  Thus  Emerson  in  many  a  poig 
nant  thrust  slashes  Academicism  before  those  Har- 


178      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

vard  Academics,  very  learned  and  industrious,  but 
not  true  American  Scholars,  because  uncreative, 
sterilely  traditional,  hence  contemptibly  un-Emer- 
sonian. 

In  the  third  place,  Emerson's  Scholar  is  not  to 
be  a  mere  recluse,  an  unpractical  dreamer.  A  per 
sonal  warmth  we  feel  here  in  his  words :  * '  Only  so 
much  do  I  know  as  I  have  lived."  Moreover  here 
lies  the  source  of  all  true  language :  ' '  Instantly 
we  know  whose  words  are  loaded  with  life,  and 
whose  not."  Then  hark  to  this  fine  apothegm: 
"Life  is  our  dictionary,"  is  our  final  word-maker, 
the  creative  compiler  of  our  vocabulary.  So  even 
our  dictionary  is  not  to  be  blindly  accepted,  but 
has  to  be  re-made  if  it  is  to  be  worth  anything. 
"The  new  deed  is  yet  a  part  of  life,"  and  is  still  to 
be  born  into  the  word  and  writ,  which  must  be  filled 
and  re-filled  with  action. 

Here  Emerson  rises  to  a  throbbing  glimpse  of  life 
in  its  totality,  even  of  his  own:  "Living  is  the 
functionary — this  is  a  total  act ; "  on  the  other  hand 
"Thinking  is  a  partial  act,"  is  only  a  limited  "func 
tion."  Very  significant  is  this  for  Emerson's  biog 
raphy,  which  he  is  primarily  to  live  as  a  whole.  The 
books,  the  speeches,  the  works  are  but  parts  of  the 
total  life  which  is  to  unfold  according  to  the  uni 
versal  spirit.  There  is  the  round  of  distinct  and 
separate  achievements,  then  there  is  the  round  of 
the  total  achievement — just  the  life  which  he  has 
lived.  This  is  to  be  felt  penetrating  and  holding 
together  all  the  details,  whatever  be  the  form  or 


MAN  IS  TRANSCENDENTAL.  ]  y<) 

stage  of  the  man 's  earthly  career.  He  must  at  last 
reveal  the  whole  of  himself  in  each  and  all  that  he 
has  won,  must  be  radiant  with  the  entirety  of  life 
in  every  part  of  it. 

Another  gleam  from  Emerson's  spiritual  work 
shop  we  may  catch  in  the  picture  of  himself  as  a 
kind  of  astronomer  ' '  in  his  private  observatory  cat 
aloguing  obscure  and  nebulous  stars  of  the  human 
mind. ' '  Such  a  catalogue  we  may  see  and  read  in 
the  Diary  of  Emerson,  who  often  daily  swept  with 
his  keen,  telescopic  vision  his  inner  heaven,  and  set 
down  its  fresh  experiences  as  they  bubbled  out  one 
by  one  immediately  from  "the  efflux  of  the  Deity " 
— he  being  the  soul's  astronomer  itemizing  all  the 
stars  of  his  psychical  firmament.  These,  then,  he 
would  cluster  into  a  constellation  and  label  it  with 
some  outward  analogy — this  Address,  for  instance, 
appears  such  a  constellation  of  bright  particular 
stars ;  many  such  also  are  seen  shining  through  his 
later  Essays.  In  it  he  embraces  stars  of  every  mag 
nitude,  from  the  first  down  to  the  faintest  twinkler 
and  not  a  few  nebulas,  which  only  the  most  powerful 
magnifier  can  resolve,  and  it  not  always.  The  infi 
nite  within  is  his  field  of  discovery,  whose  outer  an 
alogue  is  the  planetary  or  cosmical  image,  in  which 
Emerson  often  expressed  himself. 

II.  Divinity  Class  Address.  It  is  a  speech  made 
to  the  young  oncoming  preachers,  and  gives  many 
a  side  thrust  at  the  old  crystallized  gospellers  of 
New  England,  with  whom  Emerson  had  already 
had  his  first  epochal  conflict,  which  threw  him  out 


180      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

of  his  ancestral  vocation.  The  result  is  a  keenness 
which  is  intended  not  only  to  prick  the  nerve,  but 
to  draw  a  gush  of  red  blood.  The  outsider,  to  whom 
the  controversy  is  foreign  and  impersonal,  can  dis 
tinctly  see  that  Emerson  has  his  war-paint  on?  and 
proposes  battle;  rather  more  fiercely  does  he  slash 
about  him  than  in  any  production  of  his  known  to 
us.  His  parting  sermon  to  his  congregation  is  of 
Christian  gentleness  compared  to  this  outburst. 
The  foe  caught  up  the  gage  and  hurled  it  back 
flaming ;  hence  the  present  Address  has  the  name  of 
being  Emerson's  mightiest  noise-producer  among 
his  writings.  The  din  is  laid  now,  though  a  little 
echo  of  it  may  still  be  heard  on  occasion.  Following 
Emerson's  analogy  in  the  preceding  address,  we 
may  name  the  theme  here  Man  Preaching,  or  the 
Transcendentalist  as  Preacher.  Both  the  positive 
and  the  negative  sides  are  given  in  the  present  case, 
the  latter  being  now  and  then  somewhat  vitriolic. 

The  preceding  Address  took  a  secular  theme,  but 
now  Emerson  passes  to  the  religious  field  which  is 
peculiarly  his  own  by  inheritance,  character,  and 
vocation.  Hence  the  increased  personal  touch  is 
felt  in  it :  "  the  true  preacher  can  be  known  in  this, 
that  he  deals  out  to  his  people  his  life — life  passed 
through  the  fire  of  thought."  Every  sermon  is  to 
be  biographical.  The  moral  sentiment,  the  senti 
ment  of  virtue  as  realized  in  his  own  daily  walk  is 
the  sermonizer's  right  theme.  When  this  sentiment 
is  lost  or  ascribed  to  another  whose  authority  you 
follow — that  is  degeneracy. 


MAN  18  TRANSCENDENTAL.  ig-j 

Very  startling  to  his  hearers  was  the  stress  which 
Emerson  put  upon  the  ' '  noxious  exaggeration  about 
the  person  of  Jesus.  The  soul  knows  no  persons/' 
Such  utterances  raised  a  storm  of  protest  even  from 
the  Unitarians.  In  fact,  Emerson's  chief  assault 
is  upon  the  transmitted  mediation  of  man  with  God 
through  Christ.  "This  Eastern  monarchy  of  Chris 
tianity"  he  will  batter  down.  Emerson  will  not 
abolish  Christ,  but  interprets  him  transcendent  ally, 
in  fact  Christ  was  the  prime  transcendentalist,  go 
ing  directly  to  the  divine  fountain-head — wherein 
alone  the  Man  Preaching  is  to  follow  him,  being 
also  the  son  of  God.  But  let  him  not  make  Jesus 
an  autocrat  over  souls,  a  kind  of  Oriental  despot  in 
the  religious  realm. 

Still  deeper  into  the  accepted  religion  is  the  nega 
tion  of  Emerson  driving.  He  seems  to  dislike  the 
Person  as  such,  and  his  daring  reaches  up  to  a 
grapple  with  the  Personality  of  God,  whose  rule 
was  also  an  " Eastern  Monarchy,"  since  the  West 
"has  always  owed  to  Oriental  genius  its  divine  im 
pulses."  In  his  Journals  of  the  present  time  we 
find  Emerson  passing  through  a  great  deal  of 
doubt  and  even  of  denial  upon  this  subject.  "Per 
sonal  life  is  faint  and  cold  to  the  energy  of  God," 
and  there  is  "some  profanation  in  saying  that  He 
is  personal."  Does  this  mean  merely  that  God  is 
not  an  ordinary  individual,  as  some  (especially  Mr 
Cabot)  have  construed  it,  and  that  Emerson  does 
not  deny  divine  self-consciousness  ?  But  Emerson 
emphatically  declares :  *  *  We  cannot  say  God  is 


182      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

self-conscious,  or  not  self  -conscious. ' '  "We  have  to 
think  that  Universal  Personality,  or  the  All-Self 
was  a  very  hazy  conception  for  Emerson  when  the 
oretically  or  explicitly  formulated.  -Still  we  shall 
often  find  it  lurking  unconsciously  in  many  a  far- 
reaching  glimpse  of  his,  and  shall  uncover  it  as 
the  ultimate  underlying  substrate  of  his  profound 
but  quite  unordered  Psychology. 

In  the  previous  Address  Emerson  emphasized 
more  what  the  Scholar  should  do;  in  the  present 
Address  he  emphasized  more  what  the  Preacher 
should  not  do — whereby  runs  through  it  a  prevail 
ing  negative  strain.  From  this  angle  we  may  re 
gard  it  is  Emerson's  grand  assault  upon  Person 
ality,  including  God,  Christ,  and  Man,  for  the  doc 
trine  has  its  decided  relation  to  Emerson  himself, 
and  is  deeply  tinged  with  the  experiences  of  his 
own  life  and  of  that  of  his  family,  through  which 
runs  an  emphasizing,  oft-repeated  evanishment  of 
persons.  Hence  it  has  a  searching  biographic  im 
port.  Undoubtedly,  too,  it  is  a  confession  of  his 
new  faith,  which  denies  the  transmitted  mediato 
rial  principle  of  the  Church.  Its  positive  side  is 
that  it  puts  strong  stress  upon  the  self -mediation  of 
Man  with  his  God,  and  foreshows  the  trend  of  the 
author's  future  work.  "We  see  it  to  be  a  re-enact 
ment  of  his  old  pastoral  fight  against  one  congrega 
tion,  but  now  elevated  and  generalized  into  a  uni 
versal  fight  against  the  whole  Church  as  then  con 
stituted.  It  has  the  ring  of  defiance  trumpeted 
from  his  new  Concord  fortress,  amply  victualed  for 


MAN  IS  TRANSCENDENTAL. 


any  siege,  whence  no  foe  can  dislodge  him,  no  con 
gregation  dismiss  him,  now  quite  the  overtowering 
heresiarch  of  Christendom. 

The  close  of  the  Address  is  for  us  its  sovereign 
part,  in  which  he  utters  his  aspiration,  perchance 
his  ambition.  He  looks  for  the  hour  when  lips 
which  "spoke  oracles  to  all  time,  shall  speak  in  the 
"West  also,  '  '  in  our  unoracled  America.  But  listen 
to  this  complaint  of  Emerson:  "The  Hebrew  and 
Greek  Scriptures  contain  immortal  sentences,  but 
they  have  no  epical  integrity,  are  fragmentary,  are 
not  shown  in  their  order  to  the  intellect."  Each  of 
these  criticisms,  for  they  are  such,  reveals  an  under 
lying  hope  of  Emerson;  he  will  write  a  poem  of 
"epical  integrity,"  he  will  organize  a  philosophy 
whose  sentences  "are  shown  in  their  order  to  the 
intellect."  Such  is  his  aspiration  oft  repeated  in 
these  earlier  years  ;  will  it  ever  be  realized  ?  Still 
more  concrete  is  his  hope:  "I  look  for  the  new 
Teacher  that  shall  follow  so  far  those  shining 
laws  that  he  shall  see  them  come  full  circle,"  for 
they  are  at  last  cyclical.  This,  however,  must  be 
shown;  but  whence?  That  new  Teacher  "shall 
see  the  world  to  be  the  mirror  of  the  soul,"  which 
verily  furnishes  the  creative  archetype.  But  who 
is  that  coming  Teacher  if  not  Emerson  himself, 
here  voicing  his  heart's  desire  to  be  not  only 
Priest,  but  also  Poet,  and  even  Philosopher? 

III.  Literary  Ethics.  This  Address,  although 
the  least  famous  of  the  three  here  conjoined,  seems 
to  us  their  culmination,  and  in  some  respects  the 


184      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

greatest  of  them  all,  because  the  most  universal. 
The  first  two  betray  more  of  the  feeling  of  personal 
attack  and  of  local  conflict ;  The  American  Scholar 
tilts  against  the  Harvard  Academicism,  The  Divin 
ity  Class  Address  very  incisively  assails  Harvard 
Theology — both  being  addressed  to  Harvard  au 
diences,  against  which  especally  Emerson  leveled 
his  guns.  Harvard  understood  this  well,  and 
practically  banned  its  slashing  critic  from  its 
precincts  for  about  a  generation.  But  the  present 
Address  was  given  at  Dartmouth  College  then  dis 
tant  a  two  days'  journey  by  stage,  and  withal 
rather  anti-Bostonian.  The  polemical  tang  is 
quite  dropped,  or  has  only  a  very  general  bearing 
which  has  its  advantages. 

Emerson  again  speaks  of  the  American  Scholar 
as  the  ideal  whom  he  wished  to  develop.  Hence 
this  third  Address  is  a  kind  of  return  in  speech 
and  thought  to  the  first.  Still  its  theme  is  dis 
tinctively  the  Writer,  or  Man  Writing,  who  is 
verily  the  outcome  and  the  fulfillment*  of  the  two 
preceding  Men — the  Thinker  and  the  Preacher 
(or  Speaker).  And  this  is  true  of  Emerson  him 
self.  His  eternal  portion  is  what  he  has  written, 
not  simply  what  he  has  thought  in  his  study  or 
what  he  has  spoken  in  his  lectures.  To  be  sure, 
these  two— his  thinking  and  his  speaking — were 
the  necessary  disciplines  for  his  literary  work. 
But  they  vanish  with  his  individual  e vanishment, 
while  his  writ  does  not  disappear  but  remains  and 
even  grows  in  influence  with  time,  after  his  per- 


MAN  IS  TRANSCENDENTAL.  185 

sonal  disappearance.  In  the  opening  paragraph 
of  his  Address  he  celebrates  the  Writer,  though  he 
still  calls  the  latter  the  Scholar,  "as  the  favorite 
of  heaven  and  earth,  the  excellency  of  his  coun 
try  and  the  happiest  of  men."  And  this  is  be 
cause  he  "extends  his  dominion  into  the  general 
mind  of  the  country,  he  is  not  one  but  many" 
which  little  touch  of  indirect  self-gratulation  is 
welcome  in  the  somewhat  reserved  Emerson. 

What  is  the  first,  the  original  act  of  the  Scholar 
(or  Literary  Man)  ?  He  must  at  the  start  see  and 
commune  with  "the  soul  which  made  the  world," 
and  must  find  "that  it  is  all  accessible  to  him;" 
then  he  must  know  himself  ' '  as  its  minister. ' '  All 
the  events  of  history  are  "sprung  from  the  soul 
of  man,"  which  must  be,  therefore,  the  grand  in 
terpreter  of  all  deeds  and  facts.  The  chief  use  of 
the  biography  of  Great  Men  "is  to  increase  my 
self -trust  by  demonstrating  what  man  can  be  and 
do. "  I  am  to  imitate  not  their  particular  acts  but 
their  universal  creative  power.  "Seeing  that 
Plato  was  and  Shakespeare  and  Milton — then  I 
dare ;  I  also  will  essay  to  be."  Here  lies  probably 
the  original  suggestion  and  meaning  of  Emerson's 
Essay  soon  to  be  his  supreme  Jiterary  form :  I 
essay  to  be,  as  well  as  Plato  and  other  great 
writers. 

;  Very  significant  are  these  early  indications  of 
Emerson  on  the  subject  of  Biography.  The  youth 
is  to  _seein  his-beloved  hero,  "that  it  is  only  a  pro 
jection  of  his  own  soul  that  he  admires."  Enter- 


186       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

son  asserts  the  common  underlying  principle  in 
all  great  men:  "I  am  tasting  t!?e  self -same  life; 
the  difference  of  circumstances  is  merely  cos 
tume.  ' '  And  if  you  know  one  supreme  biography 
well,  "you  master  the  biography  of  this  hero  and 
of  that  and  of  every  hero."  Excellent  glimpse  is 
this  of  the  true  science  of  Biography,  still  so 
chaotic  in  these  days.  But  we  have  to  ask,  will 
Emerson  himself  realize  this  conception?  Very 
famous  is  his  book  on  Representative  Men;  will  he 
unfold  the  unity  working  in  and  through  the  lives 
of  all  these  great  characters?  The  answer  lies  in 
the  future ;  but  let  not  the  reader  forget  the  ques 
tion,  for  he  is  or  should  be  much  interested  in  see 
ing  whether  the  glimpser  Emerson  can  rise  to  be 
the  organizer. 

The  instructions  of  Emerson  to  the  Writer  (or 
Scholar)  are  repeated  with  new  emphasis  for  they 
are  drawn  from  his  most  intimate  personal  expe 
rience.  The  first  command  is,  "embrace  solitude 
as  a  bride."  Renounce  the  bribe  of  money  and  all 
forms  of  self-indulgence ;  you  are  great  only  ' '  by 
being  passive  to  the  super-incumbent  spirit."  He 
cries  out:  "Go  cherish  your  soul,  expel  compan 
ions,  set  your  habits  to  life  of  solitude."  Still  we 
have  to  remark  that  Emerson  in  his  own  case  did 
not  make  himself  a  hermit.  He  showed  a  decid 
edly  practical  side  not  only  in  money  matters  but 
also  in  the  propagation  of  his  doctrine.  Still  this 
side  of  himself  he  did  not  need  to  stress  in  Yan- 
keeland. 


MAN  IS  TRANSCENDENTAL.  187 

Nor  must  we  o:nit  to  mention  Emerson's  em 
phasis  upon  life  as  a  whole.  The  true  writer  "will 
feel  that  the  richest  romance,  the  noblest  fiction 
that  was  ever  woven,  lies  enclosed  in  human  life. 
Itself  of  surpassing  value,  it  is  also  the  richest 
material  for  his  creations."  Eecollect  that  when 
this  Address  was  given,  Emerson  was  only  thirty- 
five  years  old,  quite  at  the  early  push  of  his  active 
literary  life.  The  underlying  trend  of  it  is  the 
outlook  of  a  man  of  letters  upon  his  forthcoming- 
career.  What  principles  is  he  to  follow?  So  we 
may  catch  here  certain  anticipations  or  prophetic 
gleams  of  his  own  life,  and  some  guiding  lines  for 
biography,  especially  for  his  own.  He  already 
forefeels  "that  the  richest  romance,  the  noblest  fic 
tion  that  was  ever  woven"  is  going  to  lie  just  in 
his  own  life.  Can  the  biographer  show  that,  with 
out  resorting  to  the  form  of  the  rove],  which  Em 
erson  did  not  employ,  and  really  did  not  like, 
though  of  course  he  read  a  little  in  such  litera 
ture  ?  Let  it  be  noted  again  that  the  grand  total 
ity  of  his  life  he  seeks  dimly  to  visualize  in  ad 
vance. 

Thus  we  put  together  this  first"  Oratorical  Triad, 
significant  in  itself,  but  especially  significant  of 
Emerson's  evolution.  AVe  may  grasp  it  as  a  kind 
of  trinity,  having  three  men  in  one,  and  one  in 
three ;  or  the  Man  as  thinking,  speaking,  writing, 
which  three  are  in  essence  the  one  Man  as  tran 
scendental.  So  we  shall  behold  them  interlinked 
in  a  single  basic  process  which  is  finally  psychical. 


188      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

The  ultimate  theme  in  these  productions  is  the  re 
lation  between  Gk)d  and  Man,  or  between  the  sov 
ereign  Self  of  the  Universe  and  this  individual 
Self  of  ours,  here  and  now,  whereof  the  transcen 
dental  form  is  for  Emerson  the  immediate  descent 
of  the  Divine  into  the  Human.  The  doctrine  is  as 
yet  indirect  and  more  or  less  implicit  in  this  Triad 
of  Addresses,  which  plays,  accordingly,  a  sort  of 
overture  to  the  coming  Emersonian  symphony. 

Still,  the  polemical  note  in  St  is  very  pro 
nounced,  and  it  must  be  deemed  Emerson 's  open 
ing  attack  upon  the  fortress  of  Philistinism, 
which  he  rightly  espied  to  be  located  in  the  Aca 
demic  institutions  of  the  land.  Harvard  College 
will  fight  back,  and  practically  ban  him  from  its 
halls  till  time  brings  his  acceptance  with  its  re 
conciliation.  But  he  cannot  be  suppressed,  he  has 
his  own  Castle  of  Defiance  in  which  he  is  not  to  be 
starved  or  captured,  and  from  which  he  will  make 
a  new  assault. 

IV. 

THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MASTERPIECE 

Time  has  fairly  settled  what  kind  of  work  is 
Emerson's  best,  and  especially  what  work  of  his 
stands  at  the  top  of  his  achievement.  His  Essays, 
First  Series  (Boston,  1841)  may  well  be  acclaimed 
his  central  and  most  influential  book.  He  was 
thirty-eight  years  old  when  it  was  published,  and 
stood vnot  far  from  the  middle  year  of  his  life's 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MASTERPIECE.      189 

total  tally.  Moreover  this  was  his  most  creative 
Epoch,  and  the  present  work  has  shown  itself  the 
most  creative  of  all  his  writings,  the  most  capable 
of  self -reproduction  in  the  minds  of  others.  Hence 
we  may  call  it  the  Transcendental  Masterpiece,  or 
the  Bible  of  Transcendentalism,  if  such  an  anti- 
prescriptive  movement  can  have  any  prescribed 
writ,  or  Bible. 

The  evolutionary  Emerson  shoAvs  a  new  stage 
of  his  evolution  in  this  new  book.  His  previous 
form  of  literary  utterance  was  the  Oration  or 
Address,  specimens  of  which  we  have  just  been 
considering.  But  now  he  has  advanced  to  the 
Essay,  which  is  the  right  artistic  expression  of  the 
Emersonian  spirit,  in  fact  is  the  Transcendental 
acme  or  ideal  of  human  composition.  It  is  a  lit 
erary  form  which  still  preserves  the  original 
efflux  or  the  spontaneous  intuitions  of  the  God- 
inspired  scribe,  even  if  its  contents  are  put  into 
a  confined  holder  and  labeled.  Its  direct  ante 
cedent  is  the  discourse,  lecture,  even  sermon,  in 
which  line  Emerson  has  already  wrought  a  great 
deal  and  for  a  long  time,  as  well  as  uttered  him 
self  upon  a  startling  variety  of  subjects.  But  Em 
erson  is  bound  to  react  against  any  traditional 
method,  even  his' own.  Hence  we  find  him  giving 
many  little  impatient  kicks  against  the  business 
of  lecturing,  though  lie  keeps  it  up  during  his  ac 
tive  life.  The  fact  is,  he  has  been  training  in  this 
way  his  audience  which  after  hearing  him  will  go 
to  his  printed  page  for  further  light.  Thus  he 


190       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

establishes  popularly  his  Lyceum  or  the  Emerson 
ian  University,  a  great  communal  Institute  of 
Learning,  unique  in  its  Professor  and  in  his  teach 
ing.  This  brought  to"  his  constituency  his  per 
sonal  presence  with  voice  and  manner — an  un- 
negligible  item  of  his  power. 

Still  he  cannot  limit  himself  to  his  oral  dis 
course;  it  is  too  particular,  temporal,  finite.  When 
spoken  his  word  belongs  only  to  this  speck  of  time 
and  to  this  spot  of  space ;  but  when  printed,  it  be 
longs  to  all  time  and.  to  all  space.  Hence  Emer 
son  must  push  forward  toward  universalizing 
himself  in  his  work.  But  even  this  more  universal 
stage  has  to  take  some  sort  of  shape- — what? 
Emerson's  choice,  doubtless  after  much  experi 
menting  and  reading  and  self-questioning,  is  the 
Essay,  whose  original  meaning  is  the  tentative  or 
the  testing,  perchance  with  a  covert  denial  of 
finality.  Still  the  Essay  in  word  and  meaning  is 
old;  here  again  the  untraditional  Emerson  fol 
lowed  tradition  instead  of  coining  his  own  rubric 
and  scheme.  We  are  told  that  the  Essays  of  Mon 
taigne,  skeptical,  dubitative,  yet  hintful,  fasci 
nated  his  boyhood  already.  Bacon's  Essays  also 
had  their  influence,  especially  in  their  English 
style,  of  whose  turns  and  glints  we  may  trace  not 
a  few  reminders  in  Emerson.  He  also  must 
have  known  the  later  English  Essayists  of  distinc 
tion,  from  Addison  down  to  his  friend  Carl  vie, 
whose  Essays,  however,  are  built  on  a  very  differ- 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MASTERPIECE.      191 

ent  principle  from  the  one  which  dominates  Em 
erson. 

Still  Emerson's  Essay  is  decidedly  his  own,  and 
of  his  own  evolution,  of  which  we  can  trace  three 
different  stages  in  his  writing — the  Journal,  the 
Lecture,  the  Essay.  The  first  records  the  most 
immediate  form  of  Emersonian  thinking,  the  mo 
mentary  descent  or  flash  of  insight  from  the  su 
pernal  source,  or  the  Oversold;  it  shows  the  re 
porter  Emerson  interviewing  God  Almighty  and 
jotting  down  the  result  in  his  Diary.  The  second 
stage  (the  Address)  exhibits  the  speaker  Emer 
son  imparting  to  his  limited  group  within  his  lim 
ited  hour  a  loosely  connected  chapter  of  these 
communications — he  being  now  the  medium  be 
tween  the  divine  agent  and  the  human  recipient, 
which  act  of  supreme  mediation,  he  claims  to  lie 
in  the  power  of  every  man,  not  merely  of  one 
Mediator.  The  third  stage  is  the  mentioned  form 
of  the  Essay — the  fixation  of  the  fleeting  spoken 
word  into  its  eternal  impress,  into  Literature. 
This  is  what  we  chiefly  read  of  Emerson  today  in 
order  that  we  may  commune  with  his  most  inti 
mate  creative  energy;  for  him  the  Essay  is  not 
merely  a  literary  vehicle  adopted  from  the  out 
side,  but  the  very  soul-form  of  his  Genius,  the 
inner  plastic  demiurge  of  his  spirit.  He  undoubt 
edly  received  hints  from  the  past  but  he  recre 
ated  them  after  his  own  spiritual  image.  And 
here  we  may  repeat  the  pervasive  idea  of  this 
Biography:  Emerson's  entire  life,  both  in  its 


192       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

works  and  in  its  behaviors,  is  an  Essay,  and  is 
also  the  ultimate  creative  source  of  these  distinc 
tive,  particular  Essays,  which  are  composed  from 
the  view  of  the  whole  man — not  only  surveying 
.he  past  but  glimpsing  the  future.  From  the 
highest  point  of  outlook  his  Biography  must  be 
the  Essay  of  all  his  Essays,  his  one  Life-Essay, 
which  again  has  its  own  literary  form,  distinc 
tive  and  characteristic. 

The  present  literary  form  still  shows  its  origin 
from  the  quick  sporadic  jets  of  the  Diary,  its 
primal  atomic  protoplasm.  Emerson  we  have 
called  the  glimpser;  he  suddenly  flashes  a  bright 
streak  of  truth  upon  the  darkness  and  then  van 
ishes;  his  words  often  incandesce  like  the -links  in 
a  chain  of  lightning,  with  that  surprise  which  he 
loved  so  much  and  cultivated.  He  did  not  and 
probably  could  not  develop  and  organize  his  in 
stantaneous  downbursts  of  thunder-claps  from 
above;  his  intuitive  sentences  in  the  Essay  still 
preserve  the  sudden  elemental  character  of  their 
origin.  They  still  strike  fire  in  the  utterance  as 
when  first  forged  in  the  transcendental  smithy. 

The  result  follows  that  he  is  often  obscure,  put 
ting  spells  of  fog  or  intervals  of  night  between  his 
brightest  flashes,  which  moreover  dazzle  the  vis 
ion  to  a  kind  of  blindness.  This  peculiar  alterna 
tion  between  light  and  darkness  has  its  well- 
known  counterpart  in  nature,  and  aiso  in  art. 
Emerson's  literary  heaven  is  starlit  rather  than 
sunlit — which  tact  has  a  shimng  worth  of  its  own. 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MASTERPIECE.      }<):] 

So  it  happens  that  he  often  becomes  cryptic, 
oracular,  mystifying,  and  we  cannot  catch  the  full 
sense  of  his  pithy  sententiality.  In  a  degree  he 
has  to  overmake  the  reading-faculty  in  every 
strong-hearted  student,  who  gets  to  understand 
him  better  by  repeated  perusual  so  as  to  know 
before  hand  what  he  means  and  whither  he  is  go 
ing.  Emerson  often  speaks  of  prophecy,  and  he 
hints  of  himself  as  prophet,  for  he  knows  himself 
as  a  grand  reservoir  of  intimations,  aspirations, 
pregnant  futurities.  To  many  his  seership  is  his 
strongest  appeal.  Then  with  him  we  feel  his 
mighty  and  persistent  longing  to  become  what 
he  is  not  and  never  can  be;  most  human  is  his 
short-falling  ambition  of  aspiring  to  be  something 
he  never  gets  to  be.  And  still  he  becomes,  and 
realizes  his  true  self  just  in  that  aspiration. 

Twelve  Essays  are  listed  in  this  First  Series, 
and  it  is  to  be  observed  thac  each  has  what  may 
be  called  an  abstract  concept  for  a  title*  They 
seek  universal  themes,  laying  aside  local  and  tem 
poral  relations,  and  rising  to  the  general.  In  this 
abstraction  they  show  the  present  tendency  of 
Emerson,  who  strives  to  be  impersonal  and  soli 
tary;  each  Essaj?-  is  in  its  way  a  kind  of  Emerson 
ian  flight  from  the  concrete  reality  to  the  Con 
cord  Hermitage  of  pure  contemplation  Still  into 
this  abstract  form  or  vase  he  pours  the  past  indi 
vidual  experiences  of  his  life,  many  of  them  very 
intimate  and  personal.  Consequently  these  Es 
says  are  at  last  to  be  read  as  a  disguised  autobiog- 


194       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON — PART  SECOND. 

raphy — a  fact  which  he  himself  intimates  more 
than  ojice.  To  be  sure,  he  will  eternize  the  transi 
tory  of  himself ;  he  seeks  to  make  universal  the  par-^ 
ticular  element  of  his  existence.  Hence  his  stress 
upon  universality  in  many  turns  of  speech.  His 
confession  is  one  of  the  self  revealing  names  which 
he  has  applied  to  these  productions. 

Noteworthy  is  the  fact  that  the  form  of  the  Es 
say  remains  with  him  to  the  end  of  his  writing 
days,  even  if  he  may  give  to  the  collection  a  some 
what  fanciful  title,  as  Society  and  Solitude,  which 
is  but  another  book  of  Essays.  Manifestly  he  has 
now  won  his  supreme  literary  structure,  evolved 
his  best  organic  utterance.  He  will  at  times  show 
signs  of  reaction  against  the  limits  of  the  Essay,  he 
being  by  nature  the  limit-breaker;  still  he  will  al 
ways  go  back  to  it  as  his  own  right  structural  form 
of  expression.  He  continues  to  exercise  his  pen  in 
numerous  other  kinds  of  writing,  as  the  Address, 
the  Poem,  the  Letter,  the  Diary ;  but  his  completer 
utterance  remains  the  Essay.  "We  believe  this  lit 
erary  form  to  be  deeply  consonant  with  his  spirit's 
own  form,  and  the  study  of  it  is  the  study  of  Em 
erson  himself,  who  is  not  merely  the  Essayist  but 
the  Essay  in  person  with  all  its  striving  to  be  im 
personal. 

Moreover  the  note  of  defiance  is  heard  every 
where  ringing  through  this  book,  the  will  not  to 
be  determined  by  anything  outside  of  himself — es 
pecially  not  by  the  past,  not  by  society  and  its 
transmitted  institutions.  The  grand  Emersonian 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MASTERPIECE.      195 

protest  is  woven  into  the  living  texture  of  this 
work.  Such  is  one  ground  of  its  popularity — a  per 
manent  ground — for  it  voices  the  spirit  of  non-con 
formity  with  the  existent  order,  which  spirit  is  per 
ennial  and  is  likely  to  grow,  or  at  least  to  recur  in 
periodic  outbursts.  It  is  a  challenge  of  the  world 
as  handed  down  from  the  fathers.  Thus  we  may 
well  deem  the  book  a  much  needed  tonic  for  the 
time  which  was  getting  ossified  in  its  own  organism. 
Boston  and  all  America  had  become  too  crystallized 
in  the  old  traditions,  and  needed  to  be  broken  up 
and  remade  or  reformed.  Such  was  the  negative 
side,  often  excessive  doubtless;  but  there  was  also 
the  positive  side  to  Emerson's  doctrine,  else  it  would 
hardly  have  lasted.  This  was  the  urgency  of  drink 
ing  directly  from  the  eternal  source  for  all  right 
inspiration  of  the  word  or  the  deed. 

But  to  our  mind  the  most  affirmative  and  hence 
the  most  enduring  thing  in  Emerson's  Essays  is 
his  longing  for  and  prophecy  of  a  new  world-dis 
cipline  different  from .  the  transmitted  European 
philosophy,  and  from  the  prescribed  Oriental  re 
ligion.  A  new  synthesis  of  the  thought  of  the  Uni 
verse  for  America  he  hoped  for,  and  indeed  sought 
to  create  as  his  supreme  achievement. 

Which  of  these  twelve  Essays  is  the  best?  Opin 
ions  differ,  according  to  the  point  of  view,  as  well 
as  cultural  preparation;  let  each  reader  answer 
from  his  own  angle.  The  Essays  show  consider 
able  diversity  in  depth,  power,  and  intelligibility. 
On  the  whole  the  central  one,  and  probably  the  most 


196       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

famous  is  The  Over-Soul,  which  contains  more  of 
Emerson's  abstract  philosophy  than  any  other 
single  production  of  his,  and  hence  its  distinction. 
It  puts  stress  upon  the  universal,  while  another 
Essay  of  this  Series,  Self-reliance,  emphasizes  the 
individual  by  way  of  contrast.  Between  these  op- 
posites  we  may  place  a  third  Essay  Circles,  as  sug 
gesting  a  form  or  way  of  mediating  these  extremes. 
To  our  mind  the  fore-mentioned  three  Essays  con 
stitute  the  heart  of  the  Emersonian  Masterpiece 
and  hint  indirectly  its  process,  even  if  the  author 
intended  no  such  inter-connection.  From  this  view 
point  we  shall  take  a  brief  look  at  each  separately 
then  at  all  of  them  rounded  together. 

I.  The  Over-Soul.  Emerson  has  thus  given  his 
own  designation  to  "that  Unity,  that  Over-Soul 
within  which  every  man's  particular  being  is  con 
tained  and  made  one  with  all  other."  But  this  is 
not  the  only  name  Emerson  gives  to  his  transcend 
ent  principle;  at  least  a  dozen  other  titles  he  ap 
plies  to  it  in  his  struggles  to  categorize  it,  or  to 
define  "the  indefinable,"  to  limit  "the  illimitable." 
It  is  for  him  "the  eternal  One"  above  all  separa 
tion,  wherein  "the  act  of  seeing  and  the  thing  seen, 
the  subject  and  object,  are  one."  Thus  Emerson 
gets  quite  metaphysical,  in  spite  of  his  dislike  for 
Metaphysics  often  expressed,  especially  in  his  later 
less  potent  years. 

But  another  class  of  terms  he  employs  for  his 
first  principle,  terms  which  involve  in  one  way  or 
other  the  conception  of  the  Soul  as  already  indi- 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MASTERPIECE.       197 

cated  in  the  title  Over-Soul.  Hence  lie  exclaims 
"the  Soul  circumscribeth  all  things,"  yea  is  really 
all  things;  not  only  Man  but  Nature  is  the  Soul, 
however  much  estranged.  Thus  Emerson  shifts 
from  his  philosophical  nomenclature  to  his  psy 
chical,  and  shows  therein  the  stress  of  his  mind. 
He  also  uses  the  word  Self  for  his  cardinal  term 
Over-Soul,  which  he  calls  "this  better  and  univer 
sal  Self"  which  is  above  all  "separated  Selves,"  as 
he  labels  individual  men  in  contrast  with  the  Over- 
Soul.  So  he  gets  the  conception  of  the  All-Self, 
universal  Selfhood,  the  absolute  Ego  or  Person.  But 
this  brings  Emerson  up  against  his  supreme  and 
lasting  ^difficulty :  he  explicitly  and  with  some  in 
tensity  refuses  personality  to  this  "universal  Self," 
declaring  "it  is  impersonal,  it  is  God. ' ' 

But  how  about  the  human  Self  or  the  individual 
Soul  ? — It  is  the  recipient  of  the  efflux  from  above, 
and  when  "it  abandons  itself  to  the  Supreme  Mind 
(Over-Soul)  finds  itself  related  to  all  its  works, 
and  will  travel  a  royal  road  to  particular  knowl- 
elges  and  powers."  Here  we  may  glimpse  with 
Emerson  his  highest  vision :  he  catches  the  outline 
of  a  Psychology  of  the  Universe,  in  place  of  the  old 
Philosophy.  Still  he  does  not  unfold  the  far  off 
gleam.  Indeed  he  seems  aware  that  the  pivotal 
matter  he  has  not  told :  "The  action  of  the  soul  is 
of tener  in  that  which  is  felt  and  left  unsaid  than  in 
that  which  is  said."  Thus  Emerson  repeatedly  in 
dicates  that  there  is  something  beyond  Emerson, 
namely  his  own  complete  fulfilment. 


198       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

II.  Self -Reliance.  The  most  inspiring  of  Emer 
son  's  Essays  for  the  majority  of  readers — it  has  in 
its  style  as  well  as  in  its  contents  an  uplift  and  ex 
uberance  which  stamp  it  as  unique  and  doubtless 
the  most  personal  of  these  productions.  Its  very 
title  is  an  appeal — an  appeal  to  the  individual  to 
fight  his  own  battle.  The  first  brief  explosion  of  the 
Motto  hoists  the  heart :  ' '  Man  is  his  own  star. ' '  We 
may  almost  hear  the  author  whetting  his  sabre  for 
an  onslaught :  ' '  Trust  thyself :  every  heart  vibrates 
to  that  iron  string."  So  we  are  now  to  have  pug 
nacious  Emerson  asserting  defiantly  his  individu 
ality:  "Whoso  would  be  a  man  must  be  a  non 
conformist,"  what  I  am.  Who  is  the  enemy  thus 
challenged?  Quite  everything  established  in  his 
environment;  especially  "societies  and  dead  institu 
tions."  All  the  past,  even  his  own  he  defies,  for 
he  ridicules  his  own  "foolish  consistency"  with 
what  he  has  been.  Public  opinion  is  scorned :  "To 
be  great  is  to  be  misunderstood. ' '  Even  the  Great 
Man,  the  Hero,  he  now  fillips  to  one  side  as  not 
compatible  with  true  self-reliance.  Hereafter  he 
will  modify  most  of  these  antagonisms,  but  now  he 
has  poised  his  spear  for  a  deadly  hurl,  verily  an  all- 
sided  defiance. 

At  once  the  reader  will  observe  how  antithetic 
this  Essay  is  to  that  on  "The  Over-Soul,"  which  is 
dominated  by  a  calm  universality  in  due  accord 
with  its  theme.  It  meant,  if  not  the  absorption,  at 
least  the  resignation  of  the  individual,  who  is  to 
make  himself  the  unobstructed  vehicle  of  the  divine 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MASTERPIECE.       i<)9 

downflow  irom  the  Supernal  One.  To  be  sure  Em 
erson  mentions  here  this  upper  Self,  but  rather  by 
the  way,  for  it  has  not  now  the  stress  or  the  writ 
er  's  personal  interest.  Somewhat  tame  seems  those 
"pious  aspirants  to  be  noble  clay  under  the  Al 
mighty"  in  presence  of  his  self-reliant  world-de- 
fiers. 

This  Essay  is  largely  an  echo  of  Emerson's  con 
flict  with  his  people  and  his  time,  especially  with  his 
church.  One  may  hear  in  it  reverberations  of  that 
primal  explosion  which  hurled  him  out  of  his  first 
pulpit.  Indeed  he  intimates  that  it  is  a  confession 
which  he  lashes  his  sides  daringly  to  express,  shout 
ing  to  his  disguised  self :  ' '  Bravely  let  him  speak 
the  utmost  syllable  of  his  confession. ' '  And  cer 
tainly  he  lays  about  himself  in  all  directions  with 
a  vehemence,  yea  with  a  vengeance,  which  betrays 
at  its  deepest  the  negation  brooding  in  his  soul. 
Who  would  have  thought  that  our  gentle  optimistic 
Emerson  could  show  so  much  -world-storming  pug 
nacity  ? 

III.  Circles.  The  strong  opposition  between  the 
Over-Soul  and  the  Under-Soul,  or  between  the  Uni 
versal  and  the  Individual,  Emerson  tries  to  recon 
cile,  rather  externally  by  his  doctrine  of  Circles. 
.For  this  reason  we  put  it  here,  though  it  is  set  forth 
separately  in  one  of  his  weakest,  most  disconnected 
and  external  Essays.  Emerson  sees  the  circle  only 
as  an  outside  suggestion,  calling  it  "the  primary 
figure,"  "this  first  of  forms,"  "the  highest  em- 
blem,"  which  he  finds  "repeated  without  end." 


200      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

But  he  makes  no  attempt  to  inter-relate  these  cir 
cles,  or  to  put  them  into  any  genetic  order;  still 
less  does  he  endow  them  with  their  psychical  sig 
nificance.  Hence  his  treatment  seems  like  a  capri 
cious  sport  of  fancy. 

Still  he  often  hints  of  something  deeper  and  more 
essential.  He  says  ' '  the  life  of  man  is  a  self-evolv 
ing  circle  which,  from  a  ring  imperceptibly  small, 
rushes  on  all  sides  outward  to  new  and  larger  cir 
cles7' — this  statement  if  interpreted  aright,  may  be 
taken  as  the  method  of  Biography,  which,  however, 
he  never  applied.  Uncertainly  suggestive  it  is — 
but  so  is  man  himself,  who  ' '  is  not  so  much  a  work 
man  in  the  world  as  he  is  a  suggestion  of  that  he 
should  be."  Very  biographic  is  all  this.  "Men 
walk  as  prophecies  of  the  next  age" — another  in 
stance  of  Emerson's  self -definition. 

The  author  also  attempts  to  get  back  to  the  cre 
ative  source  of  this  circular  universality:  "Whilst 
the  eternal  generation  of  circles  proceeds,  the  eter 
nal  generator  abides ; "  but  he  is  not  himself  circular 
in  his  own  process,  but  is  "superior  to  creation  and 
contains  all  its  circles,"  which  are, 'therefore,  wholly 
external  to  it,  and  not  an  integral  element  of  God- 
hood.  From  this  point  of  view  Emerson  has  not  in 
ternally  mediated  the  Over-Soul  and  the  Under- 
Soul,  or  the  Creator  and  the  Created,  in  one  com 
mon  principle.  The  dualism  remains,  as  far  as  this 
rssay  is  concerned. 

But  deeper  insight  we  shall  find  in  the  author's 
Essays  on  Compensation  which  essentially  treats 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MASTERPIECE.      201 

also  of  the  doctrine  of  Circles.  More  particularly 
in  human  conduct  does  the  deed  come  back  to  the 
doer,  thus  circling  round  to  its  starting-point.  But 
now  this  "moral  circle"  is  carried  up  to  its  source 
as  a  manifestation  of  '  *  the  in-working  of  the  All, ' ' 
of  which  it  is  the  very  essence.  Also  we  hear  the 
declaration  that  "the  universe  is  represented  in 
each  one  of  its  particles. ' '  Very  lofty  and  true,  as 
far  as  it  goes ;  still  we  have  to  ask,  show  how  ?  Once 
more  we  hearken  eagerly:  "everything  is  made  of 
one  hidden  stuff;"  but  again  we  have  to  cry :  What 
is  that  universal  stuff?  Still  better  is  this:  "We 
put  our  life  into  every  act, ' '  that  is,  our  whole  life 
animates  every  detail — another  hint  for  our  biog 
raphy.  Then  listen  to  something  yet  higher  in  the 
maxim  that  every  man  "is  an  entire  emblem  of  hu 
man  life,"  which  means,  if  we  understand  this 
"emblem,"  that  every  individual  life  reflects  the 
universal  life.  An  inference  would  be,  that  every 
single  biography  which  is  not  permeated  with  this 
universal  creative  element,  is  insofar  a  failure, 
whatever  be  the  interest  of  its  details.  But  the  high 
est  point  of  his  vision  he  touches  in  the  following : 
"God  re-appears  with  all  his  parts  in  every  moss 
and  cobweb. ' '  In  fact  just  this  is  the  supreme  gen 
erative  act  of  the  Creator,  who  puts  himself  "with 
all  his  parts,"  that  is,  with  his  threefold  process, 
into  every  atom.  Here  the  before-mentioned  dual 
ism  between  Over-Soul  and  Under-Soul,  is  har 
monized.  But  did  he  see  this  ?  At  any  rate  he  has 
not  stated  this  ultimate  insight  of  his  in  the  unify- 


202       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON — PART  SECOND. 

ing  terms  of  the  soul  (or  Psyche).  He  adds:  "the 
value  of  the  universe  contrives  to  throw  itself  into 
every  point."  Good  again,  but  he  is  still  meta 
physical  in  spite  of  himself,  he  has  not  quite  broken 
through  to  the  psychical,  which  ultimately  is  not 
only  circular,  but  the  creator  of  circles  and  of  itself 
too  as  circular.  Such  is  verily  the  process  of  the 
All-Self,  creatively  projecting  its  own  circle  or 
process  (the  psychosis)  into  every  creative  individ 
ual,  thing  or  person. 

This  height  we  may  well  deem  the  culmination  of 
Emerson's  pure  thought  in  the  present  Transcen 
dental  Epoch.  It  is  not  wrought  out  or  organized  ; 
it  still  remains  an  intimation,  suggestion,  prophecy, 
as  he  himself  often  declares.  Amid  his  furious  nega 
tive  critique  of  Tradition,  he  intersperses  these  far 
away  disconnected  glimpses,  yet  grandly  positive, 
of  the  All-Self  who  "re-appears  with  all  his  parts 
in  every  moss  and  cobweb,"  and  thus  is  the  basic 
ever-pervasive  principle  of  Universal  Psychology. 
This  is,  in  our  opinion,  what  he  visions  in  his  First 
Philosophy,  which  haunted  him  as  an  unfulfilled  as 
piration  quite  to  his  last  sunset. 

V 

THE   TRANSCENDENTAL   CRISIS 

We  now  are  to  consider  a  phase  of  Emerson's 
activity  quite  distinct  from  that  which  we- have  just 
set  forth,  which  was  the  phase  of  the  Essay.  In 
this  he  was  looking  upward,  toward  the  height,  to- 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  CRISIS.  203 

ward  the  Universal;  but  now  his  eye  has  turned 
downward,  toward  the  Particular,  yea  toward  the 
People.  We  may  take  the  following  sentences 
which  belong  to  this  time,  as  hintful  of  his  present 
spirit :  * '  Transcendentalism  does  not  mean  sloth, ' ' 
nor  does  it  mean  withdrawal  to  our  castle;  "the 
good  and  the  wise  must  learn  to  act,  and  carry  sal 
vation  to  the  combatants  in  the  dusty  arena  below. ' ' 
So  Emerson  descends  from  his  lofty  perch  and  pro 
poses  to  make  his  appeal  directly  to  the  people. 
This  change  involves  what  we  may  call  the  Tran 
scendental  Crisis  in  Emerson 's  life. 

Under  the  above  heading,  which  indicates  a  new 
turn  or  tendency  in  the  author's  evolution,  we 
place,  four  Addresses;  let  us  name  them  specially 
the  Oratorical  Quaternion,  with  the  following  titles 
— all  of  them  having  been  delivered  in  the  same' 
year: 

1.  Man  the  Reformer.    Boston,  January,  1841. 

2.  The  Conservative.  Boston,  December,  1841. 

3.  The  Times.  Boston,  December,  1841. 

4.  The  Transcendent alist.  Boston,  January,  1842. 
The  first  contrast  to  be  emphasized   is   between 

these  four  Addresses  delivered  at  the  high  tide  of 
Emerson's  Creative  Decennium,  and  the  three  Ad 
dresses  made  some  three  or  four  years  earlier,  and 
forming  the  preliminary  attack  of  the  Transcen 
dental  Epoch.  Then  the  appeal  was  to  an  academic 
audience  at  Colleges ;  now  the  appeal  is  to  a  popular 
audience  on  the  several  occasions  at  Boston.  Herein 
we  see  a  significant  change  in  Emerson's  field  of 


204      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON — PART  SECOND. 

propagation ;  he  has  turned  away  from  the  learned 
professoriate,  and  it  has  more  decidedly  turned 
away  from  him,  especially  in  the  ease  of  Harvard, 
after  that  defiant  Divinity  Class  Address.  Emer 
son  now  sets  his  face  to  win  the  folk,  and  he  will 
keep  it  set  in  that  direction  during  the  rest  of  his 
active  life.  He  finds  that  he  must  mould  his  con 
stituency  afresh  out  of  the  original  popular  proto 
plasm,  quitting  the  world  of  educated  tradition. 
This  more  popular  appeal  is  stamped,  we  think,  up 
on  the  style,  the  treatment,  and  the  choice  of  the 
subjects  of  these  Addresses.  We  feel  the  adjust 
ment  of  the  new  idea  to  the  new  audience. 

Significant  is  the  fact  that  this  oratorical  Quater 
nion  falls  within  the  same  year  (1841)  which  wit 
nessed  the  appearance  of  the  Essays.  Let  us  note 
the  striking  contrast  between  these  two  Emersonian 
works,  though  they  were  contemporaneous  in  publi 
cation  but  probably  not  wholly  in  composition. 
Mark  how  different  the  attitude,  even  if  the  thought 
remains  the  same.  From  the  summits  of  contem 
plation  in  the  Essays,  we  now  behold  Emerson  in 
these  Addresses  coming  down  into  the  plain  below, 
as  it  were  passing  from  Concord,  to  Boston,  there  to 
do  battle  for  his  cause.  In  this  same  pivotal  year 
(1841)  the  magazine  called  the  Dial  is  started, 
chiefly  by  him,  so  that  the  printed  page  in  its  peri 
odical  form  is  made  to  do  the  work  of  propagation 
and  also  of  onslaught. 

Thus  we  may  notice  Emerson  evolving  a  line  of 
literary  products  which  start  with  his  book  on  Na- 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  CRISIS.  205 

tare  whose  character  is  not  that  of  the  Essay  or  of 
the  Address,  but  that  of  the  Treatise,  or  bundle -of 
little  Treatises,  gathered  about  one  common  theme. 
We  now  imagine  the  author  turning  the  middle  year 
of  his  Creative  Decennium  with  two  different,  in 
deed  quite  opposite  sets  of  works,  and  advancing  to 
a  new  stage  of  his  career.  But  just  at  present  it 
falls  to  us  to  give  a  few  details  concerning  each  of 
these  four  Addresses,  which  we  have  put  together 
under  one  name  as  his  Oratorical  Quaternion,  in 
contrast  with  his  previous  Oratorical  Triad. 

I.  Man  the  Reformer.  His  audience  was  mainly 
composed  of  .Mechanics'  Apprentices,  before  whose 
Library  Association  he  gave  his  lecture.  Hence  he 
puts  stress  upon  ' '  the  claims  of  manual  labor,  as  a 
part  of  the  education  of  every  young  man. ' '  So  it 
comes  that  there  runs  a  socialistic  thread  through 
the  entire  discourse :  * '  We  are  to  revise  the  whole 
of  our  social  structure,  the  state,  the  school,  religion, 
marriage,  trade,  science;"  indeed  the  whole  insti 
tutional  world  is  to  be  thrown  into  the  furnace  and 
to  be  moulded  anew.  Such  is  really  Emerson  the 
Reformer  at  this  time,  whom  he  defines  as  ' '  the  Re- 
maker  of  what  is  made;"  he  will  take  nothing 
transmitted  from  the  Past,  without  a  thorough  over 
hauling  and  reconstruction.  Man,  now  rendered 
artificial  by  society,  must  go  back  to  his  natural 
task  of  physical  labor.  Well  might  those  young 
fellows,  Mechanics'  Apprentices,  have  applauded 
such  a  passage  as  this:  "the  manual  labor  of  soci 
ety  ought  to  be  shared  among  all  its  members;"  or 


206      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

this:  "A  man  should  have  a  farm  or  mechanical 
craft  for  his  culture. "  So  Emerson  is  here  ad 
dressing  the  pupils  of  the  New  University — he  him 
self  being  now  Head  Professor  in  the  Department 
of  Labor. 

The  time  indeed  overflowed  with  all  sorts  of 
schemes  for  social  amelioration,  as  the  speaker  em 
phasizes  :  "In  the  history  of  the  world  the  doctrine 
of  Reform  had  never  such  scope  as  at  the  present 
hour,"  and  he  proceeds  to  tabulate  the  grand  up- 
burst  of  isms  which  has  shaken  to  the  center  every 
thing  established:  "not  a  kingdom,  town,  statute, 
rite,  calling,  man  or  woman,  but  is  threatened  by 
the  new  spirit."  Especially  Emerson  himself  is 
surrounded  and  "threatened  by  this  new  spirit." 
Theoretically  he  holds  on  and  onward,  but  prac 
tically  he  holds  back.  This  very  year  (1841)  his 
friends  start  their  grand  overture  of  human  regen 
eration  known  as  Brook  Farm,  but  he  does  not  start. 
Still  he  remains  their  greatest  exponent,  itemizing 
in  this  Address  an  ominous  list  of  social  abuses. 

To  our  mind  the  most  interesting  as  well  as  most 
positive  and  biographic  part  of  the  lecture  is  his 
description  of  the  self-sufficing  man,  independent 
of  all  social  relations,  lodged  high  and  inexpugnable 
in  his  Castle  of  Defiance  where  he  can  devote  him 
self  to  Poetry  and  Philosophy,  and  other  things 
"incompatible  with  good  husbandry."  Let  him  be 
"a  pauper,  eat  his  meals  standing,  relish  the  taste 
of  fair  water  and  black  bread."  So  must  the 
Genius  live  "who  can  create  works  of  art,"  no  self- 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  CRISIS.  207 

indulgence,  no  taste  for  luxury  in  that  little  back 
room  of  his.  But  it  should  be  repeated  that  Emer 
son  the  writer  was  never  reduced  to  any  such  tussle 
with  the  dragon  Poverty,  having  that  nice  little 
nest-egg  of  one  hundred  dollars  a  month,  which  was 
always  being  laid  afresh  in  his  Concord  nest.  Let 
us  rejoice  that  he  is  not  in  the  condition  which  he 
describes:  "This  is  the  tragedy  of  Genius — at 
tempting  to  drive  along  the  ecliptic  with  one  horse 
of  the  heavens  and  one  horse  of  the  earth — there  is 
only  discord  and  ruin  and  downfall  to  chariot  and 
charioteer."  Thus  Emerson  appreciates  his  eco 
nomic  independence  and  uses  it  for  the  highest  end. 
Still  many  a  Genius  has  done  his  work  anyhow, 
though  compelled  to  yoke  in  one  team,  heaven-scal 
ing  Pegasus  and  earth-plodding  Old-Sorrel. 

TT.  Tlie  Conservative.  Here  we  behold  Emerson 
turning  right  over  to  his  own  opposite  in  less  than 
a  year,  passing  from  the  Innovator  to  the  Conserva 
tor  of  man's  Social  Order.  Doubtless  a  consider 
able  personal  and  somewhat  sudden  experience  lies 
behind  this  change ;  also  the  audience  is  now  differ 
ent,  the  lecture  having  been  held  at  the  Masonic 
Temple.  Probably  a  gathering  of  middle-class  busi 
ness-folk,  hardly  of  Mechanic's  Apprentices;  we 
hear  little  of  the  return  to  manual  labor,  and  of  the 
immediate  satisfaction  of  our  wants  by  our  own  di 
rect  toil.  And  the  Economic  Institution  with  its  in 
tricate  mediation  of  demand  and  supply  is  not  abol 
ished,  but  actually  defended;  the  system  of  Prop 
erty  is  old  and  seemingly  ind^pensible.  Strangely 


208       RALPH  WA  LDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

we  now  hear  Emerson  crying  out  to  his  Qwn  Re 
formers:  "Yon  also  are  conservatives.  However 
men  please  to  style  themselves,  I  see  no  other  than 
a  conservative  party. "  He  has  really  gotten  into 
a  tiff  with  his  own  people :  "You  quarrel  with  my 
conservatism,  bnt  it  is  to  build  up  one  of  your 
own."  You,  too,  wish  to  make  your  doctrine  pre 
scriptive,  and  so  you  berate  "the  seced^r  from  the 
seceder,"  who  is  none  other  than  myself  just  as 
present. 

"With  surprise  do  we  see  Emerson  sallying  forth 
from  his  fortress  to  excuse  and  even  to  defend  in 
stitutions  :  "they  do  answer  their  end,  they  are 
really  friendly  to  the  good,  and  unfriendly  to  the 
bad — they  foster  genius."  Even  greater  is  their 
merit:  "they  afford  your  talent  and  character  the 
same  chance  of  demonstration  and  success,  which 
they  might  have  if  there  was  no  law  and  no  prop 
erty."  "What  a  change  inside  of  one  year — what 
caused  it  ?  Or  was  it  simply  that  love  of  inconsis 
tency  and  of  self-contradiction  which  he  not  only 
defends  but  flourishes. 

Still  we  are  to  mark  the  exception.  Amid  all  his 
new  propagandism,  Emerson  declares:  "Existing 
institutions  are  not  the  best ;  they  are  not  just,  and 
in  respect  to  you  personally  they  cannot  be  justi 
fied."  When  Emerson  regarded  the  absolute  au 
thority  of  the  divine  efflux,  law  and  institution  were 
swept  away  before  it :  "A  strong  person  makes  the 
law  and  custom  null  before  his  will."  Such  is  the 
supreme  struggle  of  Emerson  at  this  time,  "bal- 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  CRISIS.  209 

ancing  reasons  for  and  against  the  establishment, ' ' 
tetering  between  the  two  parties ;  so  he  declares  that 
" there  is  no  pure  Reformer,"  and  equally  on  the 
other  hand  * '  there  is  no  pure  Conservative. ' '  Thus 
he  fluctuates  from  side  to  side  caught  in  the  time's 
dualism :  Innovation  vs.  Conservation. 

Emerson  holds  that  Institutions  are  expedient  but 
not  just  ideally;  he  says,  "I  gladly  avail  myself  of 
their  convenience, ' '  but  to  truth  they  cannot  be  vin 
dicated  from  the  standpoint  of  the  Over-Soul  whose 
message  to  me  personally  must  be  absolute  in  com 
mand.  Thus  his  religion  made  him  anarchic,  while 
his  experience  or  his  Yankee  Common  Sense  helped 
Irim  to  be  somewhat  institutional.  What  caused 
this  breach  in  his  spirit?  His  friends  propose  to 
realize  his  doctrine,  but  he  stands  aghast  at  the  real 
ity;  Brook  Farm  cleaves  in  him  a  deep  chasm  of 
soul  between  the  theoretical  and  the  practical,  be 
tween  Man  the  Reformer  and  Man  the  Preserver, 
between  the  new  experiment  and  his  old  Concord 
home.  We  feel  specially  in  this  Address  that  he  is 
mostly  addressing  himself,  that  his  speech  at  its 
deepest  is  self-expression,  and  thus  is  biographic. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Emerson  herein  has  tack 
led  the  profoundest  and  most  enduring  problem  of 
his  life.  At  bottom  his  evolution  hovers  about  Insti 
tutions,  for  and  against,  passing  through  a  number 
of  phases  up  to  his  last  Period,  when  the  see-saw 
lets  up. 

III.  The  Times.  The  title  of  this  lecture  indi 
cates  that  it  might  be  a  kind  of  synthesis  or  co-ordi- 


210       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

nation  of  the  two  preceding  lectures,  thus  seeking 
to  reconcile  their  contradiction.  The  opposites,  the 
Reformer  and  the  Conservative,  play  through  it, 
under  a  variety  of  designations,  as  we  may  note  in 
the  sentence:  "The  two  omnipresent  parties  of 
History,  the  party  of  the  Past  and  the  party  of  the 
Future,  divide  society  today  as  of  old."  But  also 
there  is  the  search  for  the  mediating  principle : 
< '  The  main  interest  which  any  aspects  of  the  Times 
can  have  for  us,  is  the  Great  Spirit  gazing  through 
them."  Is  not  this  a  glimpse  of  the  World-Spirit 
which  is  sovereign  over  all  the  conflicts  of  parties, 
and  uses  them  for  its  end  ?  So  all  the  events  of  the 
time  and  the  experiences  of  the  individual  have  the 
one  purpose :  '  *  the  information  they  yield  of  this 
supreme  nature  which  lurks  within  all."  Or  we 
may  in  his  words  call  it  ' '  the  Law  which  enters  us, 
becomes  us,"  making  us  "immortal  with  the  im 
mortality  of  the  Law."  Emerson  calls  it  also  the 
Moral  Sentiment,  vainly  wrestling  to  categorize  it 
to  his  satisfaction. 

It  is  evident  that  Emerson  is  struggling  to  catch 
and  formulate,  and  also  to  name,  the  pervasive  and 
eternal  element  in  this  storm  of  daily  occurrences, 
in  this-  dualism  of  existence.  "The  Times  are  the 
masquerade  of  the  Eternities ;"  thus  he  opens  in  the 
first  paragraph,  condensing  his  theme  into  a  sen 
tence;  the  Idea  underlying  and  creating  all  these 
ebullient  appearances  of  Time  is  what  he  will  clutch 
and  express. 

This  lecture,  though  delivered  a  week  before  the 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  CRISIS.  211 

previous  one  on  the  Conservative,  contains  properly 
the  universal  thought  overarching  and  unifying  all 
these  lecture's.  It  is,  therefore,  one  of  his  supreme 
efforts,  though  strangely  neglected  by  the  biogra 
phers  and  commentators.  The  composition,  how 
ever,  is  unequal,  with  a  certain  aridity  in  parts,  and 
with  too  much  repetition  for  the  reader  who  has  just 
perused  the  preceding  Addresses.  For  the  original 
listeners  this  was  probably  not  a  fault  but  a  help. 
The  best  portions  are  Emerson's  attempts*  to  grasp 
the  World-Spirit  lurking  "underneath  all  these  ap 
pearances  "  and  generating  them.  Very  subtle  and 
elusive  is  ' '  this  ever-renewing  generation  of  appear 
ances,"  still  we  are  to  take  note  that  it  "rests  on 
reality,  and  reality  that  is  alive,"  yea,  it  is  verily 
"the  Life  of  our  life."  So  Emerson  wrestles  with 
the  conception,  certainly  a  great  one,  and  flings 
down  along  the  path  of  his  struggles  many  a  desig 
nation  of  it :  Life,  Cause,  Being,  Reality,  Moral  Sen 
timent,  the  Great  Spirit.  Still  he  seems  somehow 
unable  to  grasp  this  Prime  Mover  as  psychical  in 
spite  of  his  suggestive  term  Over-Soul  (not  used  in 
these  Addresses).  Still  less  does  he  organize  his 
subject  with  an  all-pervading,  consistent  nomencla 
ture.  Well,  if  he  did,  that  would  doubtless  jeopard 
the  popular  appeal  of  his  speech,  for  his  wriggling 
is  what  makes  his  audience  wriggle,  and  so  keep 
awake. 

A  glimpse  of  what  constitutes  the  Great  Man, 
Emerson  gives  us  fleetingly :  ' '  The  elemental  Real 
ity,  which  ever  and  anon  comes  to  the  surface  forms 


212      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

the  grand  men,"  the  supreme  leaders  who  are 
sharers  in  this  supernal  energy.  We  cry  out :  apply 
the  doctrine,  show  it,  0  Emerson,  in  your  biogra 
phies.  But  can  we  find  it,  for  instance  in  Repre 
sentative  Men,  where  it  ought  overwhelmingly  to 
appear?  Still  a  great  and  fertile  thought  is  here 
uttered,  even  if  f ragmentarily ;  nothing  less  than 
the  hint  of  the  Great  Man  and  of  what  makes  him 
great;  so  that  this  Address  at  its  highest  may  be 
deemed  Emerson's  treatise  on  the  "World-Spirit. 

IV.  The  Transcendentalist.  And  now  Emerson 
proposes  to  give  to  his  audience  at  the  Masonic 
Temple  (Boston,  January,  1842),  a  direct,  undis 
guised  account  of  that  doctrine  which  has  been 
close  to  his  heart,  but  has  remained  unspoken  in 
the  three  foregoing  lectures.  Only  once  or  twice 
have  we  heard  the  word  dropped  passingly  in  the 
course  of  their  delivery.  But  now  the  thing  must 
out,  and  so  the  father  tells  of  his  child  and  its  his 
tory,  from  which  record  we  have  already  taken  sig 
nificant  extracts  and  need  not  repeat  them  here.  "We 
behold  Emerson  reviewing  and  re-affirming  Tran 
scendentalism  after  six  or  seven  years'  trial  of  it, 
if  we  count  from  the  beginning  of  the  present  Cre 
ative  Epoch  of  his  life.  There  is  an  apolegetic  note, 
an  undercurrent  of  defense  in  the  lecture ;  mani 
festly  the  new  doctrine  is  not  popular  in  Boston. 
Many  are  the  accusations  against  the  Transcenden 
talist,  especially  "the  charge  of  antinomianism/ ' 
for  he  claims  that  "he  has  the  Lawgiver"  in  him 
self,  and  can  make  his  own  Law,  and  hence,  "may 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  CRISIS.  213 

with  safety  not  only  neglect  but  even  contravene 
every  written  commandment."  He  carries  about 
with  himself  his  own  Legislature,  and  enacts,  ac 
cording  to  need  his  Higher  Law. 

It  is  evident  that  Society  will  not  look  with  favor 
upon  such  a  man,  who  of  his  inner  necessity  betakes 
himself  to  flight  from  the  social  system  "to  a  cer 
tain  solitary  and  critical  way  of  living,  from  which 
no  solid  fruit  has  yet  appeared  to  justify  the  sepa 
ration.  "  It  is  at  this  point  that  Emerson  becomes 
critical  of  his  own  people  and  shrinks  from  these 
consequences  of  his  own  doctrine.  He  does  not  en 
dorse  the  act  of  Thoreau,  nor  approve  of  Brook 
Farm.  But  is  not  his  own  theory  thus  made  prac 
tical,  and  are  not  his  own  flight  and  isolation  re 
peated  by  his  followers?  Emerson,  however,  pro 
tests  against  this  outcome  of  Emerson,  as  he  looks 
at  such  a  distorted  image  of  himself.  With  re 
proaches  he  couples  advice.  But  it  is  plain  that 
Transcendentalism  has  developed  certain  repulsive 
phases  to  its  founder. 

Thus  he  feels  strongly  and  confesses  with  no  lit 
tle  disappointment  the  negative  side  of  his  work, 
which  he  calls  in  one  passage  "this  Iceland  of  ne 
gations."  Still  he  does  not  give  up,  but  cries :  "Pa 
tience  and  still  patience."  A  streak  of  depression 
runs  through  this  lecture,  and  a  vein  of  fault-find 
ing;  he  is  disillusioned  as  he  scans  some  of  the  re 
sults  of  Transcendentalism.  He  criticises  his  fol 
lowers,  but  he  cannot  help  feeling  that  his  words 
are  somewhat  of  a  boomerang.  Here,  too.  we  find 


214      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

one  of  his  moods  of  self-confession,  which  keeps 
flashing  guide-lights  over  his  biography. 

In  the  midst  of  his  lecture  without  much  connec 
tion  with  the  rest,  Emerson  throws  out  this  brief 
gleam:  "I — this  thought  which  is  called  I — is  the 
mould  into  which  the  world  is  poured  like  melted 
wax.  The  mould  is  invisible,  but  the  world  be 
trays  the  shape  of  the  mould."  That  is,  the  shape 
of  the  I  or  Ego  is  what  we  are  to  behold  everywhere 
in  the  world — in  Nature  and  Mind.  This,  if  car 
ried  out  into  its  details,  would  give  the  world-sci 
ence,  revealing  in  all  its  shapes  the  ultimate  cre 
ative  shape  of  the  I  or  the  Self.  Here,  then,  sud 
denly  darts  upon  the  reader  another  glimpse  of  Psy 
chology  as  the  universal  science.  But  it  remains  a 
disconnected  sentence,  a  germinal  thought,  not  an 
evolution ;  a  prophecy,  not  a  fulfilment.  Still  amid 
his  present  discouragements  it  gleams  up  his  great 
positive  hope,  which  will  stay  with  him  to  the  end. 
We  might  almost  regard  this  supreme  psychical  in 
sight,  or  perchance  outlook  as  the  chief  anchor  of 
his  life.  Already  we  have  noted  it,  and  we  shall 
note  it  again  as  it  repeatedly  rises  to  the  surface, 

Such,  then,  is  that  work  of  Emerson  which  we 
here  call  his  Oratorical  Quaternion,  largely  a  crit 
ique  of  man's  social  Institutions,  somewhat  in  con 
trast  with  the  previous  Oratorical  Triad  which  is 
more  a  critique  of  Doctrines  as  embodied  in  the 
three  types  of  intellectual  men,  the  thinker,  the 
.preacher,  and  the  writer.  Both  sets  of  Addresses 
reveal  as  their  common  animus  Emerson's  hostility 


AFTERMATH  OF  ESSAYS.  215 

to  Tradition,  doubtless  with  exceptions  and  fluctu 
ations.  Such  is  more  or  less  the  negative,  critical 
Emerson,  but  over,  around  and  through  these  nega 
tions  the  affirmative  Emerson  shoots  his  sun-gleams 
of  optimism  and  prophecy. 

We  cannot  quit  this  year  (1841)  without  remark 
ing  its  almost  superhuman  activity  on  the  part  of 
Emerson.  His  mightiest  year  it  seems,  his  annus 
mirabilis,  the  very  perihelion  of  his  life's  orbit. 
His  Essays  (First  Series),  this  Oratorical  Quater 
nion,  the  Dial,  Letters,  Journals,  Poems  burst  forth 
to  light  with  a  kind  of  cosmic  energy  in  these 
months.  Never  again — but  we  have  not  come  to  that 
yet. 

VI. 

AFTERMATH  OF  ESSAYS 

Three  years  after  the  appearance  of  the  First 
Series  of  Essays,  Emerson  published  the  book 
known  as  his  Second  Series  of  Essays  (1844).  The 
two  sets  belong  together,  being  designated  by  the 
same  general  title,  .and  constructed  after  a  like  pat 
tern  and  out  of  similar  original  materials,  as  his 
Journals  and  Lectures.  Such  pell-mell  protoplasmic 
stuff  had  to  be  formed  anew,  and  the  Essay  is  that 
form,  undoubtedly  Emerson's  most  distinctive  and 
permanent  art-form,  which  has  its  own  literary 
character  apart  from  its  content,  being  the  best  na 
tive  garb  of  the  author's  thought.  That  is,  the  Es 
say  is  the  most  adequate  verbal  Incarnation  of  Em 
erson 's  soul. 


216      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PAKT  SECOND. 

Still  there  is  felt  to  be  a  considerable  difference 
between  the  two  Series.  The  first  has  twelve  Es 
says,  and  the  latter  eight,  and  the  number  of  pages 
in  each  Series  is  in  about  the  same  proportion.  And 
we  cannot  help  thinking  that  this  quantitative  dif 
ference  holds  true  of  the  qualitative ;  this  Second 
Series  falls  off  quite  one-third  in  any  spiritual  val 
uation — which  fact  by  no  means  signifies  that  it 
is  worthless.  On  the  contrary  there  are  many  sin 
gle  pithy  sentences  and  passages,  which  no  student 
of  Emerson  could  afford  to  miss.  Still  on  the  whole, 
the  present  Series  is  a  repetition,  undoubtedly  with 
many  new  illustrations  and  suggestions,  yea  with 
new  points  of  view,  even  if  subordinate. 

It  bears  more  the  character  of  a  retrospect  than 
the  First  Series ;  the  author  is  decidedly  in  the  mood 
of  returning  upon  his  past  and  taking  a  look  at  his 
former  self,  and  at  the  ground  over  which  he  has 
passed.  In  this  regard  the  Essay  on  Experience  is 
central,  for  it  tells  Mr.  Emerson's  cardinal  expe 
riences,  sometimes  disguised  but  sometimes  in  the 
first  person :  1 1 1  am  not  the  novice  I  was  fourteen, 
nor  yet  seven  years  ago. ' '  "Well  may  he  say  so,  for 
it  is  now  going  on  seven  years  since  Jie  delivered  his 
Divinity  Class  Address,  whose  afterclap  almost 
hoisted  him  out  of  New  England;  indeed  it  would 
have  done  so,  but  for  his  Concord  Castle  of  Defiance. 
And  nearly  fourteen  years  have  passed  since  that 
earlier  overturn  which  whirled  him  from  his  pulpit 
and  from  his  ministerial  vocation  forever.  Thus 
Emerson  can  look  back  upon  several  epochal  expe- 


AFTERMATH  OF  ESSAYS.  217 

riences  in  his  retrospective  mood,  if  we  date  them 
from  the  year  1844,  the  time  of  the  publication  of 
the  present  work.  Perhaps  we  may  find  some 
ground  for  this  bent  toward  reminiscence  in  the 
growing*  crisis  of  Transcendentalism,  which  we  have 
already  noted. 

The  Essay  on  Experience  is  pivotal  in  the  life  of 
Emerson  for  still  another  and  deeper  reason:  it 
hints  the  grand  node  of  his  transition  from  a  purely 
negative  to  a  more  positive  spirit,  his  rise  from  the 
everlasting  No  to  the  everlasting  Yea,  as  Carlyle 
puts  it  in  his  Sartor,  which  Emerson  knew  well, 
probably  from  the  time  of  his  visit  to  the  author  at 
Craigenputtock.  Here  then  he  indicates  his  per 
sonal  history  in  the  evolution  of  Transcendentalism. 

Emerson  was  indeed  fully  conscious  of  this  auto 
biographic  essence  in  his  own  writing,  and  for  that 
matter  in  all  worthy  writing.  More  than  once  he 
has  declared  that  his  works  are  confessions,  as  were 
those  of  Goethe — extracts  drawn  from  the  salient 
pages  of  his  life 's  own  book.  He  also  saw  that  this 
inner  revelation  was  the  chief  purpose  and  excel 
lence  of  all  great  poetry.  In  his  Essay  on  the  Poet, 
contained  in  this  Series,  he  lifts  this  thought  into 
a  lofty  sentence :  "Dante's  praise  is  that  he  dared 
to  write  his  autobiography  in  colossal  cipher,  or  into 
universality."  Here  Emerson  is  again  telling  on 
himself;  his  particular  life  he  elevates  through  his 
writ  into  an  universal  worth  and  import.  And  so 
this  entire  Second  Series  shows  a  distinctive  strain 


218       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND* 

in  its  composition  by  its  more  frequent  and  direct 
glances  into  the  author's  life. 

If  the  Essay  on  Experience  has  for  its  centra! 
topic  the  new  birth  of  Emerson  into  his  world- view, 
being  a  record  of  his  palingenesis,  the  first  Essay 
of  the  Series,  named  The  Poet,  contains  the  confes 
sion  of  his  life's  highest  aspiration,  which  was  to 
be  the  epic  singer  of  the  New  "World,  the  Homer  of 
the  Occident.  This  is  evident  by  his  several  allu 
sions,  direct  and  indirect,  to  the  Chian  bard.  More 
over,  the  theme  must  lie  here  in  the  West.  Repeat 
edly  we  catch  the  underbreath  of  secret  ambition, 
as  in  this :  "We  have  yet  had  no  genius  in  America, 
with  tyrannous  eye,  which  knew  the  value  of  our 
incomparable  materials, ' '  unless  this  genius  is  to  be 
Emerson's  own — a  genius  which  "saw  another  car 
nival  of  the  same  gods  whose  picture  it  so  much  ad 
mires  in  Homer. ' '  Did  he  meditate  some  great  epic 
modeled  after  the  Iliad  with  its  Hellenic  deities 
whose  scene,  however,  was  to  be  in  our  West  ?  He 
exclaims:  "Oregon  and  Texas  are  yet  unsung/' 
though  the  heroes  of  this  most  recent  Trojan  War 
are  on  hand  and  in  battle,  so  that  "America  is  a 
poem  in  our  eyes;  its  ample  geography  dazzles  the 
imagination,  and  it  will  not  wait  long  for  metres." 
Since  Emerson's  time,  it  has  done^much  metering 
and  story-telling,  but  has  not  yet  evolved  its  one 
all-concentrating  genius  like  Homer.  Possibly  it  is 
too  democratic  for  any  such  autocracy  of  talent.  In 
the  line  of  literary  self-expression  is  not  its  best 
product  the  superlative  clown  of  the  great  Amer- 


AFTERMATH  OF  ESSAYS.  219 

lean  Circus,  Mark  Twain,  certainly  the  sovereign 
of  his  kind?  Very  suggestive  is  the  fact  that  Em 
erson,  our  supreme  forecaster  and  prophet,  should 
at  least  have  dreamed  of  an  Occidental  Homer 
singing  the  overture  of  the  vast  New  "World,  and 
holding  another  poetic  ' ( carnival  of  the  same  gods, ' ' 
those  antique  Olympians  who  came  down  from  their 
height  and  mingled  with  the  heroes  in  the  conflict. 
But  how  strange  sounds  even  such  a  dream  from 
our  untraditional  Emerson.  How  could  he  use 
again  those  old  gods,  who  are  worn  out  with  much 
usage ! 

Still  he  does  not  fail  to  connect  the  poet  with  the 
most  recent  Emersonian  doctrine,  the  divine  efflux 
which  is  the  direct  inspiration  of  all  high  poetic 
achievement.  Not  only  the  ideas  but  also  the  words 
at  their  best  flow  down  from  above  and  seal  the 
poet's  expression  as  God-given.  And  the  poet  is 
designated  as  ' '  the  sayer,  the  namer, ' '  the  inventor 
of  the  word,  and  hence  it  comes  that  "Homer's 
words  are  as  costly  and  admirable  to  Homer,  as 
Agamemnon's  victories  are  to  Agamemnon."  In 
fact  Homer  with  his  song  is  the  eternal,  Agamem 
non  and  the  other  heroes  with  their  deeds  are  the 
transitory,  unless  made  immortal  by  the  poet's  im 
mortality. 

Another  phase  of  the  Emersonian  downflow  of 
the  Over-Soul  into  the  individual  man  is  found  in 
the  Essay  on  Character  of  the  present  Series.  This 
he  identifies  with  that  power  or  personal  sover 
eignty  in  the  mar  above  his  works  or  words,  a  latent 


220      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

energy  or  ' '  a  reserved  force  which  acts  directly  by 
its  presence. ' '  Such  a  Power  is  often  called  myth 
ically  a  Familiar  or  Genius  or  even  Demon,  which 
has  the  gift  to  guide  its  possessor  beyond  his  reason 
or  even  his  consciousness.  Thus  he  dips  from  the 
source  of  all  happenings,  and  "  appears  to  share  in 
the  life  of  things,  and  to  be  an  expression  of  the 
same  laws  which  control  the  tides  and  the  sun," 
drinking,  as  it  were,  from  the  first  fountain  of  cre 
ation.  Hence  Character  in  Emerson's  view  is  con 
nected  with  the  divine  efflux  which  now  takes  the 
form  of  a  mere  human  Presence  radiating  the  Over- 
Soul,  without  saying  a  word  or  doing  a  deed.  So 
we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  spirit  which  holds  com 
munion  with  the  genesis  of  events,  and  sees  what  is 
moving  them  within  from  above. 

Herein  we  may  behold  Emerson  grappling  with 
the  conception  of  the  Great  Man,  who  is  a  revela 
tion  of  the  Divine  in  the  one  individual,  who  is 
thus  supernally  endowed,  and  obedient  only  to  his 
own  law,  which  for  him  is  God's  very  law.  Em 
erson  tears  a  leaflet  from  his  intimate  book  of  life 
when  he  tells  what  constitutes  the  sanctity  and 
charm  of  great  characters;  non-conformity  they 
show,  to  the  existent  order,  for  they  all  shout:  "I 
never  listened  to  your  people 's  law,  or  to  what  they 
call  their  Gospel."  Truly  his  own  defiant  yell 
from  his  Concord  Fortress,  such  as  we  have  heard 
before.  Character  for  him  is  the  born  aristocrat, 
being  divinely  given,  and  not  to  be  acquired  by  any 
training,  not  even,  we  suppose,  by  reading  Emer- 


AFTERMATH  OF  ESSAYS.  221 

son's  books.  We  plight  ask,  what  then  is  the  good 
of  writing  them?  Full  daringly  he  draws  the  in 
ference  from  his  view  of  Great  Men :  "  Nature  ad 
vertises  me  that  in  democratic  America  she  will  not 
be  democratized. "  The  true  ruler  is  the  "Wise  Man, 
who  takes  communications  direct  from  the  Over- 
Soul,  the  absolute  Monarch  of  the  Universe.  For 
such  men  are  "divine  persons,  character-born,"  and 
receive  authority  straight  from  the  Lord's  Head 
quarters. 

Such  is  one  stage  of  the  ever-evolving  Emerson, 
the  undemocratic,  the  anti-institutional  stage,  ut 
tered  with  the  war-trump  of  challenge.  In  this 
same  Series  is  the  Essay  headed  Politics,  in  which 
we  hear  the  same  note  of  defiance  even  shriller  and 
more  bellicose.  The  State  as  an  organization  he  the 
oretically  knocks  to  pieces,  though  practically  we 
may  have  to  tolerate  it  for  a  while  yet,  till  the  Wise 
Man  can  get  hold — why  not  Emerson  himself,  the 
prime  vehicle  of  the  Over-Soul?  Listen  to  this: 
"the  Wise  Man  is  the  State,"  for  he  has  Character, 
and  "the  appearance  of  Character  makes  the  State 
unnecessary. ' '  Still  we  have  to  swallow  a  little  dose 
of  the  State,  since  it  exists  "to  educate  the  Wise 
Man,  and  with  the  appearance  of  the  Wise  Man,  the 
State  expires."  Thus  Emerson  the  Platonist  be 
comes  more  Platonic  than  Plato  himself,  whose  Wise 
Man  (or  Overseer)  still  kept  warriors,  but  the  Em 
ersonian  "needs  no  army,  fort  or  navy — he  loves 
men  too  well. ' ' 

The  interest  will  culminate  when  the  Civil  War 


222       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

breaks  out  and  Emerson's  "Wise  Man  will  be  sub 
jected  to  the  severest  discipline  of  the  age.  In  fact 
just  this  institutional  development  of  the  man 
through  the  experience  of  the  Nation's  History, 
may  well  be  deemed  the  central  thread  of  his  biog 
raphy.  His  statement  now  runs :  ' '  Good  men.  must 
not  obey  the  laws  too  well,"  which  leaves  a  loop 
hole  to  crawl  through,  and  he  will  use  it  more  than 
once  hereafter. 

Such  is  the  world-defiant,  transcendental  Emer 
son  on  his  lofty  perch — truly  one  of  his  own  Great 
Characters.  But  he  has  another  humbler  side — the 
individual  aspect  of  him  over  against  the  universal 
— in  contrast  with  the  Great  Emerson  we  may  here 
call  him  without  disrespect  the  Small  Emerson. 
This  phase  of  himself  he  also  discloses  in  the  pres 
ent  Series — see  the  Essay  entitled  Manners.  Emer 
son  now  pays  not  only  attention  but  deference  to 
' '  the  compliments  and  ceremonies  of  our  breeding ' ' 
which  have  been  of  course  transmitted  from  the  past 
and  accepted  by  this  rebel  against  tradition.  Thus 
we  behold  the  other  side  of  the  defiant  Emerson ;  his 
submission  to  the  ways  and  even  fashions  of  formal 
society,  so  that  some  have  held  him  snobbish:  "I 
prefer  a  tendency  to  stateliness  to  an  excess  of  fel 
lowship."  The  great  protester  adopts  without  pro 
test  the  ritual  of  the  traditional  gentleman.  The 
transmitted  institutions  of  society  he  fought  desper 
ately,  the  transmitted  manners  of  society  he  ac 
cepted  submissibly.  To  be  sure,  his  native  bent 
was  to  cloak  himself  in  the  external  proprieties ; 


THE  DAWNING  REACTION.  223 

very  natural  to  him  was  his  courteous  aloofness,  his 
dignified  isolation :  ' '  In  all  things  I  would  have  the 
island  of  a  man  inviolate."  The  external  Emer 
son  is  this,  quite  orthodox ;  but  the  internal,  spirit 
ual  Emerson  is  furiously  heretical.  In  the  last 
Essay  of  the  Series,  called  Nominalist  and  Realist 
he  seems  to  be  conscious  of  this  dualism  in  himself 
and  identifies  it  with  some  old  philosophic  concep 
tions  reaching  back  to  the  Middle  Ages. 

This  is  the  last  work  of  Emerson  which  bears  the 
title  of  Essays,  though  his  other  books  were  hardly 
more  than  similar  collections.  But  he  gave  them 
new  names,  as  if  he  wished  to  intimate  that  his 
work,  though  still  in  appearance  a  series  of  Essays, 
had  in  it  a  principle  of  unity.  For  instance,  his  last 
publication,  entitled  Letters  and  Social  Aims  may 
just  as  well  be  called  his  sixth  (or  more)  series  of 
Essays. 

VII. 

THE  DAWNING  REACTION 

The  same  year  (1844)  which  saw  the  publication 
of  the  preceding  Second  Series  of  Essays,  witnessed 
also  another  event  which  sets  a  milestone  in  Emer 
son's  life  history — not  a  Period  or  Epoch,  but  a 
lesser  turning-point  in  his  spirit's  evolution.  This 
is  marked  by  Three  Addresses  which  bear  the  fol 
lowing  titles,  and  constitute  Emerson's  second  Ora 
torical  Triad. 

I.     The  Young  American,  before  the  Mercantile 


224      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

Library   Association,  Boston,   February    7,    1844. 
With  look  turned  to  the  Future,  to  the  West. 

II.  New  England  Reformers,  a  Sunday  lecture 
before  the  society  in  Amory  Hall,  Boston,  March 
3,  1844.    With  look  turned  to  the  Present,  to  Bos 
ton. 

III.  West  India  Emancipation,  in  the   Court 
House  at  Concord,  Mass.,  August  1, 1844.  With  look 
turned  to  the  Past,  to  Old  England. 

The  three  audiences  are  non-academic,  but  other 
wise  differ  from*  one  another,  and  the  three  Ad 
dresses  show  marks  of  a  separate  adjustment  on 
part  of  the  speaker.  The  first  audience  is  a  gen 
eral  one,  and  hence  calls  forth  in  him  a  more  gen 
eral  and  affirmative  appeal.  The  second  audience 
seems  rather  a  special  one,  and  evokes  Emerson's 
pungently  critical,  damnatory  mood.  In  the  first 
lecture  he  is  more  the  optimist,  in  the  second  more 
the  pessimist.  The  third  audience  is  the  popular 
one,  of  the  country  side,  and  is  addressed  under  the 
name  of  Fellow-citizens. 

Still  in  spite  of  such  opposition  in  matter  and 
manner,  the  three  lectures  are  at  bottom  one  in 
spirit  and  character.  For  they  all  show  his  inner 
reaction  against  his  decennial  achievement ;  he  man 
ifests  a  deep  disappointment  with  his  locality,  with 
his  work,  and  with  his  followers.  It  would  seem 
that  he  thinks  or  at  least  fears  that  he  has  failed ; 
for  time,  as  usual,  turns  on  him  her  sourest  face 
before  ratifying  his  deed  as  immortal.  Then  he  lets 
us  glance  into  that  deepest  scission  of  his  soul :  his 


THE  DAWNING  REACTION.  225 

estrangement  from  the  whole  institutional  world, 
from  the  pre-suppositions  of  his  own  spiritual  ex 
istence,  that  is,  from  the  social  order  in  which  he 
was  born,  reared  and  educated. 

On  the  whole  the  first  speech  turns  outward,  the 
second  inward ;  the  one  travels  forward  to  the  new 
world,  the  other  stays  at  home  in  old  Massachusetts 
— with  uplift  in  the  one  case,  with  downcast  in  the 
other — facing  there  toward  hope,  facing  here  to 
ward  despondency,  if  not  despair.  The  third 
speech  sems  to  indicate  the  way  of  escape  back  over 
the  Ocean.  Still  let  us  not  forget  that  all  three  are 
sprung  of  a  common  source  and  represent  one  phase" 
of  this  decennial  development  of  Emerson.  Thus 
they  are  trined  in  one  thought;  call  it  his  second 
Oratorical  Triad,  in  striking  contrast  with  his  first, 
which  preluded  the  sunrise  of  his  Creative  Epoch, 
while  this  Triad  epilogues  the  sunset  thereof.  Each 
lecture  deserves  a  brief  special  notice. 

I.  The  Young  American.  This  lecture  seems  to 
have  been  composed  in  the  first  enthusiasm  after  a 
trip  to  the  "West.  It  is  a  series  of  sympathetic 
glances  into  the  future  of  the  country,  which  Emer 
son  now  seems  proud  to  consider  his  own,  calling  it 
"our  fortunate  home,"  the  land  which  "is  to  repair 
the  errors  of  a  scholastic  and  traditional  educa 
tion.  ' '  The  latter  is  Emerson 's  great  enemy  in  New 
England ;  he  beholds  in  the  West  the  mightiest  co 
adjutor  of  his  own  work  against  tradition.  No  won 
der  he  praises  this  new  disciple  of  his,  considering 
his  disgust  at  his  old  Apcstolate.  Witness  the 


226       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SEOOND. 

bound-bursting  spirit  everywhere,  especially  in  the 
enormous  extension  of  territory  to  the  Pacific,  in 
the  overflowing  migration  and  in  the  space-over 
coming  railroad.  He  seems  to  say  in  his  heart, 
though  not  in  his  speech :  The  West  is  the  true 
Transcendentalist,  the  right-down  Emersonian. 

One  thinks  at  times  that  he  is  almost  ready  to  mi 
grate  to  the  Promised  Land,  which  he  has  discov 
ered  toward  the  setting-sun.  He  daringly  prognos 
ticates  :  ' '  The  nervous,  rocky  West  is  intruding  a 
new  and  continental  element  into  the  national  mind, 
and  we  shall  yet  have  an  American  genius."  He 
dwells  on  this  contrast:  "We  in  the  Atlantic 
States,  have  been  commercial,  and  have  easily  im 
bibed  an  European  culture."  He  sees  and  says  re 
peatedly  that  the  original  primary  genius  of 
America  is  to  get  away  from  that  Eastern  seaboard, 
which  is  dominated  by  old-world  prescription. 
Here  we  may  ask,  will  Emerson  practically  realize 
this  insight  ?  Will  he  migrate  to  his  new  world  of 
freedom,  as  did  his  Puritan  ancestor,  Peter  Bulk- 
ley,  from  Old  to  New  England,  some  two  centuries 
since?  Not  at  all;  that  is  not  Waldo  Emerson.  On 
the  contrary,  he  will  soon  go  the  other  way,  East 
ward  toward  the  traditional,  not  Westward  toward 
the  untraditional.  Whereof  something  is  to  be  said 
hereafter. 

The  lecturer,  however,  continues  on  the  ascent  till 
he  reaches  his  highest  point  of  view,  where  he  visions 
the  "sublime  and  friendly  Destiny  by  which  the 
human  race  is  guided,"  which  he  also  calls  the 


THE  DAWNING  REACTION.  227 

friendly  Genius  or  the  serene  Power  which  has  in 
hand'  the  direction  of  the  great  movement  of  the 
Occident.  In  other  words  Emerson  now  glimpses 
the  World-Spirit  in  the  West.  It  is  not  a  very  ex 
tended  or  a  very  clear  glimpse.  Still  he  catches  the 
ironic  method  of  it,  " which  infatuates  the  most 
selfish  men  to  act  against  their  private  interest  for 
the  public  welfare."  It  is  that  Spirit  which  has 
made  us  "build  railroads,  we  know  not  for  what 
or  for  whom,"  yet  at  our  own  expense  with  the 
motive  of  gain.  The  man,  pursuing  his  individual 
end  is  used  by  this  Supernal  Power  to  bring  forth 
the  opposite  of  what  he  intended,  namely  its  own 
universal  end.  If  Emerson  had  hearkened  about 
him  the  very  hour  he  was  delivering  this  lecture  in 
1844,  he  would  have  heard  something  of  the  annex 
ation  of  Texas,  intended  by  the  then  rulers  as  a  vast 
accession  to  the  slave  territory  of  the  nation,  but 
intended  by  the  other  Ruler,  the  World-Spirit,  as 
a  vast  accession  to  the  free  territory  of  the  nation 
in  due  season.  Now  it  is  a  great  merit  of  Emerson 
that  he  in  the  West  caught  a  flash  of  that  sovereign 
secret  Genius  of  the  Age,  and  noted  the  ironic  na 
ture  which  veils  its  procedure. 

The  lecturer  proceeds  to  find  the  positive  and 
praiseworthy  side  in  the  communistic  experiments 
which  his  friends  were  then*  trying  in  New  Eng 
land.  Still  he  gives  some  gentle  shakings  of  the 
head  at  the  business.  Soon,  however,  his  condem 
nation  will  be  more  incisive.  Now,  too,  with  patri 
otic  Americanism  he  turns  away  from  England, 


228       RJLPH  W.4LDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

but  it  will  not  be  long  before  lie  will  wheel  about 
and  seek  her  out.  Let  the  reader  not  forget  the 
present  problem  of  Emerson:  "Will  he  move  for 
ward  to  the  American  West  or  backward  to  the  Eu 
ropean  East?  Let  the  future  settle  it.  But  just 
now  we  have  to  plunge  from  this  lofty,  buoyant, 
optimistic  mood  into  quite  the  opposite. 

II.  New  England  Reformers.  This  lecture 
brings  before  us  Emerson  composing  and  deliver 
ing  a  denunciatory  philippic  to  his  own  people,  in 
which  he  pitilessly  exposes  before  their  eyes  their 
own  shortcomings.  "We  must  take  into  account  the 
audience  in  order  to  understand  the  bearing  of  the 
address.  It  was  a  free  religious  society,  known  as 
the  Church  of  the  Disciples,  whose  pastor  was  the 
transcendental  Rev.  James  Freeman  Clarke.  The 
listeners  were  in  the  main  the  new  reformers,  with 
whose  conduct  Emerson  had  become  disgusted, 
even  if  he  sympathized  with  their  object.  Yet  they 
were  largely  products  of  his  own  movement.  Thus 
he,  the  original  Transcendentalist,  shows  a  pro 
nounced  reaction  against  the  Transcendentalists — 
against  the  people  more  than  against  their  doctrine. 
But  even  the  latter  is  not  without  some  questioning 
on  his  part,  since  it  has  led  to  such  results. 

The  lecturer  gives  at  the  start  a  vivid  account  of 
his  own  seething  epoch,  in  which  "the  spirit  of  pro 
test  and  detachment,"  of  dissent  and  discontent 
dominated  New  England.  In  general,  it  was  a  time 
of  universal  separation  from  every  thing  trans 
mitted  and  established  in  the  shape  of  institutions, 


THE  DAWNING  REACTION.  229 

beliefs,  manners,  and  even  foods.  And  we  hear  the 
arch  protester  himself  starting  to  protest  just 
against  his  own  protest.  He  begins  to  hedge  in  re 
gard  to  his  darling  doctrine,  declaring  that  "the 
criticism  and  attack  on  institutions  which  we  have 
witnessed,  has  made  one  thing  plain,  that  society 
gains  nothing  whilst  a  man,  not  himself  renovated, 
attempts  to  renovate  things  about  him — he  has  be 
come  tediously  good  in  some  particular,  but  negli 
gent  and  narrow  in  the  rest. ' '  That  is,  a  hobbyist, 
faddist,  crank,  in  today's  lingo.  Such  is  the  keen 
thrust  against  the  new  horde  of  world-improvers; 
but  the  lecturer's  speech  gets  actually  venomous 
when  he  arraigns  them  for  "hypocrisy  and  van 
ity  ;"  the  world-improvers  turn  world-imposters. 
So  Emerson  has  come  to  see  that  the  reformers 
themselves  need  reforming  first  of  all,  and  he  starts 
with  himself.  They  do  not  go  to  the  root  of  the 
trouble,  but  "spend  all  their  energy  on  some  acci 
dental  evil ; ' '  slaying  insects  they  are  only  insect- 
slayers. 

Manifestly  Emerson  has  reached  the  stage  of  pro 
testing  against  Emerson,  and  the  original  seceder 
is  inclined  to  secede  from  his  own  primal  secession. 
But  we  are  not -to  think  that  Emerson  has  become 
reconciled  with  the  institutional  world.  He  empha 
sizes  •:  • "  the  wave  of  evil  washes  all  our  institutions 
alike/'  not  merely  one  little  corner  of  them.  "I 
find  nothing  healthful  or  exalting  in  the  smooth 
conventions  of  society;"  yet  Emerson  had  his  de 
cided  social  conventions,  in  which  at  times  he  stayed 


230      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  SECOND. 

or  even  stuck,  rather  hidebound.  And  he  will  com 
promise  :  ' ( it  is  handsomer  to  remain  in  the  estab 
lishment  better  than  the  establishment, ' '  though  he 
goes  on  to  condemn  Property,  State,  Society,  even 
Family;  everything  established  is  damned  and 
damnable  by  the  simple  fact  of  being  established 
and  transmitted.  Practically  he  accepts,  though 
theoretically  he  anathematizes.  "Remember,"  he 
almost  vociferates,  "that  no  society  can  be  as  large 
as  one  man. ' '  And  he  warns  seemingly  the  govern 
ing  powers:  "Hands  off!  let  there  be  no  control 
and  no  interference  in  the  administration  of  the 
affairs  of  this  kingdom  of  Me. ' '  Yet-  he  did  pay  hte 
taxes  instead  of  going  to  jail  with  Alcott  and  Tho- 
reau,  who  would  thus  practically  live  up  to  their 
doctrine  and  his. 

Hence  he  notes  with  disapprobation  the  new; re 
formed  societies  established  by  his  friends  during 
the  past  years.  "Three  communities  have  been  al- 
ready  formed  in  Massachusetts"  he  says,  probably 
referring  to  Brook  Farm,  Fruitlands,  and  Hope- 
dale,  poetic  names  redolent  of  the  pasture,  the  or 
chards,  and  idealism.  In  Emerson 's  eyes  their 
chief  "defect  was  their  reliance  on  Association." 
The"  very  e '  idea,  of  union ' '  has  become -repugnant  io 
him  }  the  separated  -dissociated  individual  is.the  true 
universal, -yea,  the  universe  itself.  He  dares  affirm 
the  extreme  consequence :  ' '  Government  will  be  ad-, 
amantine  without  any  governor."  Listen  to  this: 
' '  The  union  is  only  perfect  when  the  uniters  are  iso 
lated."  Emerson  seems  to  have  reached  the  stage 


THE  DAWNING  REACTION.  231 

when  he  falls  into  a  fit  of  horrors  at  the  thought  of 
instituted  society.  He  rejects  all  forms  of  associ 
ated  Man,  and  spurns  the  conception  of  human  as 
sociation  as  realized  in  institutions. 

So  much  as  to  his  intellectual  view.  To  be  sure 
when  it  comes  to  the  will,  Emerson  plays  truant  to 
his  hot-worded  theory.  This  malfeasance  in  him 
self  he  recognizes  and  seems  to  defend,  for  he  speaks 
of  himself  when  he  says  that ' '  every  man  has  at  in 
tervals  the  grace  to  scorn  his  performances,  in  com 
paring  them  with  his  belief  of  what  he  should  do ; " 
yea,  he  will  even  go  so  far  as  to  side  "with  his  en 
emies"  against  himself  in  their  reproaches,  "gladly 
listening  and  accusing  himself  of  the  same  thing. ' ' 
Thus  the  breach  between  conviction  and  fulfilment, 
between  his  theory  and  practice,  between  duty  and 
deed,  he  not  only  knows,  but  glorifies.  However,  is 
not  such  an  inner  scission  the  pure  melancholy  of 
.existence,  when  a  man  has  realized  himself  in  a 
deed  and  then  scorns  it  as  unworthy  of  his  best 
self?  Would  it  not  be  better  to  stop  doing  or  even 
living  ?  From  this  source  we  are  inclined  to  derive 
that  strain  of  disillusion,  and  at  times  of  downright 
pessimism,  which  rises  to  the  surface  in  the  present 
lecture.  F,QT  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  Emer 
son,  the  far-famed  op tin^ist,  was  not  always  optim 
istic.  •..:.::_.:.-_-•::  ; 

But  toward  the  close  the  lecturer  falls  back  upon 
his  positive  and  happy-making  doctrine  of  the  di 
vine  descent  into  him  of  the  Over-Soul,  declaring 
for  the  hundredth  time  that  "this  open  channel  to 


232       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

the  highest  life  is  the  first  and  last  reality, ' '  though 
he  may  not  be  able  to  give  it  any  adequate  utter 
ance.  He  reproves  himself  for  writing  such  a  nega  - 
tive  lecture  and  bids  his  mood:  "Suppress  for  a 
few  days  your  criticism  on  the  insufficiency  of  this 
or  that  teacher  or  experimenter/'  and  he  will  undo 
himself.  Glad  you  did  not  follow  your  own  advice, 
Mr.  Emerson,  else  we  had  never  had  this  very  char 
acteristic  document  of  your  spiritual  history.  Hear 
him  exhort  himself  to  the  better  life :  "let  a  man  fall 
into  the  divine  circuits  and  he  is  enlarged."  Then 
again:  "Obedience  to  his  genius  is  the  only  liber 
ating  influence. "  He  has  resolved  after  his  way  his 
pessimistic  discords  into  the  grand  harmonizing 
solace:  "There  is  a  Power  over  us  and  behind  us, 
and  we  are  the  channels  of  its  communications." 

"Worthily  conceived  is  such  a  view  as  far  as  it 
reaches ;  but  just  this  Supernal  Power,  as  he  holds 
it,  is  the  origin  of  Emerson's  limitation  and  hence 
of  his  negation.  He  grants  it  lovingly  to  individ 
ual  Man,  specially  to  Emerson ;  but  he  denies  it  un 
conditionally  and  even  passionately  to  associated 
Man  in  all  transmitted  social  organization.  Such 
is  the  grand  Emersonian  denial,  a  negation  as  great 
as  that  of  Faust;  in  fact  in  this  aspect  we  might 
call  him  the  New  England  Faust  in  spite  of  his  dis 
like  of  Goethe.  This  reminds  me  of  an  impression 
which  has  often  come  to  mind  in  reading  Emerson 's 
Journals:  he  felt  some  deep,  very  dim,  yet  repug 
nant  affinity  with  the  poet  of  Faust,  whom  he 


THE  DAWNING  REACTION.  233 

tackles  again  and  again,  but  either  gets  thrown  or 
rebounds  violently  from  his  grip. 

As  we  look  back  somewhat  surprisedly  at  the  man 
giving  this  lecture,  we  have  to  think  that  Emerson 
is  quite  at  sea  theoretically  and  practically,  almost 
in  a  condition  of  inner  dissolution.  He  has  had  a 
fateful  experience  with  his  doctrine,  with  his  peo 
ple,  with  himself.  He  appears  at  times  to  revel  in  a 
love  of  self-contradiction  which  shows  a  kind  of 
demonic  defiance  of  reason :  ' '  The  union  is  only  per 
fect  when  the  nniters  are  isolated" — which  seems 
to  say  that  the  essence  of  union  is  just  disunion. 
We  hear  his  repeated  declarations  that  he  is  for  the 
law,  but  against  its  execution,  in  favor  of  a  govern 
ment  without  any  governing  or  governor,  support 
ing  theory  but  refusing  practice.  Discordant  soul, 
What  is  he  to  do  with  himself  ?  For  a  strong  reme 
dial  turn  he  must  take  soon,  with  a  dip  into  some 
restorative  influence.  The  next  lecture  gives  a  fresh 
whirl  to  his  present  kaleidoscopic  soul-changes. 

III.  Emancipation  of  the  Negro  in  British  West 
Indies. — In  this  Address  Emerson  makes  us  feel 
that  the  act  of  black  enfranchisement  was  still  more 
deeply  an  act  of  white  enfranchisement,  by  no 
means  excluding  the  speaker  himself,  even  if  done 
by  a  foreign  nation  on  foreign  territory.  Yonder 
in  England  at  least  rays  forth  the  sun  of  hope, 
though  quite  eclipsed  everywhere  here  at  home — in 
Boston,  in  Massachusetts,  in  the  United  States. 
Such  is  Emerson's  self-lacerating  estrangement 
from  his  own  native  place,  which  he  must  somehow 


234       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

overcome  or  sink.  But  in  the  distance  overseas  he 
glimpses  rescue. 

The  Address  was  delivered  in  Emerson's  home 
town,  which  had  taken  into  its  head  to  celebrate  the 
tenth  anniversary  of  the  emancipation  of  the  West 
India  slaves  by  British  act  of  Parliament.  A  pecu 
liar  temper  of  the  time  and  place  such  a  celebration 
shows ;  doubtless  it  sprang  from  the  antagonism  to 
the  Annexation  of  Texas,  and  to  the  election  of 
Polk,  which  took  place  this  year  (1844).  The  pro- 
slavery  movement  seemed  triumphant  in  the  free 
new  United  States — the  unfree,  hence  lying,  dis 
graceful  country ;  behold  in  contrast  the  true  love  of 
liberty  and  the  magnanimity  of  old  monarchic 
Great  Britain!  Some  such  feeling  must  have  in 
spired  the  occasion,  and  also  Emerson's  speech, 
which  echoes  it,  at  times  with  a  good  deal  of  pas- 
don  for  him,  usually  the-  dispassionate.  Moreover 
he  .will  now  avert  his  look  from  the  West,  which  al 
most  unanimously  favors  that  vast  increase  of  Tex 
an  territory,  and  which  is  filled  with  its 'truly  Occi 
dental  aspiration  known  as  "manifest  destiny.'' 
Yes,,  Emerson  will  not  now  turn  even  for  hope  to 
ward  the  youngest  States  but  toward  .the  oldest, 
;  even  across  the  Atlantic. 

The  speech  first  gives  a  lengthy  historic  recital  of 
-the  act  of  Emancipation,  .when  it  suddenly  leaps  up 
with  the  cry :  ' ' Fellow-citizens ! "  The  orator  then 
begins  spinning  a  warm  personal  thread :  While 
working  up  this  history,  "I  have  not  been  able  to 
read  a  page  of  it  without  the  most  painful  compar- 


THE  DAWNING  REACTION.  235 

isons" — with  what?  With  the  whole  political 
world  of  America,  from  largest  to  smallest — the 
Nation,  the  State,  the  Community.  "  Whilst  I  have 
read  of  England  I  have  thought  of  New  England," 
much  to  the  discredit  of  the  latter.  The  truth  is, 
that  once  vigorous  Puritan  spirit  has  sunk  into  the 
slough  of  servility  to  slavery,  while  the  old  English 
stock  has  improved  to  the  point  of  moral  sublimity, 
not  simply  spoken  but  acted:  "The  great-hearted 
Puritans  have  left  no  posterity"  is  one  peal  of  the 
speaker's  agony;  another  bitter  reproach  runs: 
"There  is  a  disastrous  want  of  men  from  New  Eng 
land."  Piercing  is  the  present  note  of  alienation 
from  his  own  ancestral  world. 

But  what  comfort  I  "I  point  you  to  the  bright 
example  which  England  set  you  on  this  day  ten 
years  ago."  Moreover  Emerson  is  decidedly  facing 
himself  toward  that  country,  and  seems  getting 
ready  4n  mind  to  start  on  his  way- thither.  He 
tl  feels  that  a  great  heart  and  soul  are  behind 
there,"  which  brought  about  this  grand  event  and 
made  it  "a  moral  revolution,  having  no  bloody 
war,"  inasmuch  as  it  had  the  power  to  draw  to  it 
' '  every  particle  of  talent  and  of  worth  in  England. ' ' 
But  how  is  it  in  this  country  ?  It  must  be  confessed 
that  from  th~e~  President  downward  •'-'  all  the  seats 
of  power  are  filled  by 'underlings,  ignorant,  timid, 
selfish,"  from  which  evidently  Emerson  must  soon 
take  his  flight.  ' '  The  Governor  of  Massachusetts  is 
a  trifler,  the  State-House  in  Boston  is  a  plaything ; ' ' 
what  is  left  to  the  honest  man  but  to  get  out  of  the 


236       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

reach  of  such  a  moral  cesspool  ?  He  will  have  to  go 
and  commune  with  "the  great-heart  and  soul  of 
England"  for  his  own  restoration.  Emerson  does 
not  directly  say  this,  but  the  reader  has  to  feel  that 
some  such  design  is  fermenting  in  his  brain. 

Let  us  in  a  brief  backlook  again  put  together  the 
three  speeches  of  this  second  Oratorical  Triad  which 
now  is  closing  the  present  Decennium.  They  form 
a  significant  whole  with  its  triple  process  made  up 
of  the  three  Addresses,  and  give  stress  to  a  weighty 
turning-point  in  Emerson 's  experience.  They  round 
a  little  arc  of  Future,  Present  and  Past,  moving 
from  the  young  West  through  New  England,  to 
ward  Old  England — verily  a  reversion  from  Amer 
ica  to  Europe.  Thus  we  begin  to  glimpse  the  re 
actionary  spirit,  very  different  from  that  aggressive 
forward-driving  Emerson  whom,  we  heard  at  the 
beginning  of  this  mightily  upheaving  Decennium 
when  he  uttered  his  opening  shout  of  defiance  and 
battle  in  his  first  Oratorical  Triad.  A  new  Emer 
sonian  Epoch  is  dawning. 

VIII. 

SUMMARY 

Herewith  is  concluded  the  most  creative  pirt  of 
Emerson 's  most  creative  Epoch,  which  we  have  un 
folded  under  the  name  of  Productivity.  It  contains 
his  greatest  writings,  ever  productive  and  repro 
ductive:  his  Treatise  on  Nature,  his  two  Series  of 
Essays,  and  his  three  sets  of  Addresses. 


SUMMARY.  237 

Moreover  there  runs  through  all  the  works  one 
central  thought  known  as  Transcendentalism,  a 
spiritual  energy,  multiform  and  elusive,  but  ever- 
present  and  active.  Not  a  system  of  philosophy, 
but  a  subtly  penetrating  influence  capable  of  thou 
sandfold  metamorphosis,  it  was  the  Proteus  of  the 
soul  of  Newr  England,  the  One  amid  all  her  changes. 
The  last  transformation  may  be  seen  in  today's  (or 
yesterday's)  doctrine  of  Pragmatism. 

In  the  printed  page  of  this  decennial  Epoch  lives 
the  eternal  Emerson,  that  part  of  him  which  has  al 
ready  shown  itself  time-proof,  that  part  which 
stamps  him  as  our  greatest  American  man  of  let 
ters.  Here  lurks  his  genetic  thought ;  we  may  deem 
it  the  brain  of  his  whole  life,  the  rest  of  him  being 
more  the  outward  limbs  and  flourishes.  This,  then, 
should  be  the  chief  quarry  of  the  student  Emerson, 
who  will  here  get  hold  of  the  key  to  the  master's 
entire  wrrit  and  also  to  his  total  career. 

The  sympathetic  reader  must  have  already  felt  a 
certain  completeness  in  the  present  round  of  Emer 
son's  Productivity,  an  inner  process  of  beginning, 
middle,  and  end,  a  cycle  of  the  author's  creative 
power — and  that  his  most  original  cycle.  This  is  the 
truly  genetic  stage  of  the  Transcendental  spirit 
whose  central  affirmative  doctrine  is  the  immediate 
efflux  of  the  Divine  into  the  Human,  recurrent  with 
each  original  act  of  the  mind. 

But  the  negative  or  critical  phase  of  this  literary 
Productivity  is  in  our  opinion,  the  more  fully  de 
veloped,  the  more  stoutly  emphasized,  yea  the  more 


238'      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

tonic  for  the  author's  time,  and  for  our  time,  and 
perchance  for  all  time.  The  critique  of  Tradition 
of  every  form  gleams  in  sword-flashes  through  Em 
erson's  writings,  whatever  be  their  label.  Espe 
cially  does  he  wield  his  tongue's  keen  slash  against 
the  traditional  social  forms.  And  it  must  be  rec 
ognized  that  in  this  negative  vein  Emerson  has  a 
perennial  work  to  do ;  for  man 's  institutions — Fam 
ily,  State,  the  Economic  Order,  the  Church — are 
going  more  and  more  to  be  put  to  the  question  for 
their  right  of  existence.  The  result  is  we  have  to 
preserve  and  rebuild  and  reform  them  consciously, 
through  knowing  what  they  are.  Emerson,  there 
fore,  and  just  this  negative  Emerson,  is  ever  re 
newed  and  renewable,  for  he  compels  us  to  think 
our  institutional  world — which  we  as  a  people  have 
never  done,  except  in  little  patches — not  only  in 
order  to  defend  it  adequately,  but  to  construct  it 
aright. 

To  be  sure,  such  a  work,  though  always  needful 
and  hence  immortal,  is  not  of  the  greatest,  is  not 
grandly  constructive  either  in  its  own  literary  char 
acter  or  in  the  social  structure  which  it  manifests. 
Not  originally  constructive,  hardly  reconstructive 
is  it,  though  the  preparation  indispensable  for  all 
right  reform  and  reconstruction. 

We  have  above  intimated  that  there  is  an  inner 
process  running  through  and  holding  together  the 
varied  literary  productions  of  the  present  creative 
Decennium.  The  outline  of  this  process  we  shall 


SUMMARY.  239 

set  down  in  a  brief  characterization,  showing  its 
three  stages. 

-  I.  Nature,  a  poetico-philosophical  treatise :  it  at-. 
firms  Nature  to  be  "the  disguised  Man'.' .on  the  one 
hand,  yet  "the  apparition  of  God"  on  the  other. 
Emerson's  opening  book  —  potential,  presenti- 
mental,  prophetic  of  his  future  on  a  number  of 
lines. 

IT.  The  Essays  in  two  Series;  they  pass  from 
concrete  Nature  to  abstract  Conception;  Emerson 
reaches  his  highest  thought  in  the  Over-Soul  (uni 
versal)- with  its  contrast  to  the  Under-Soul  (or  indi 
vidual)  ,  whose  dualistic  interaction  is  the  central 
theme  of  the  whole. 

TIT.  The  Addresses  in  three  sets,  making  ten  all 
together.  The  appeal  is  more  popular,  less  esoteric 
than  that  of  the  Essays.  And  also  the  critical  ele 
ment  dominates,  showing  the  short-comings  of  the 
time  in  doctrines  and  social  arrangements.  The  Ad 
dresses  give  the  most  complete  evolution  of  Emer 
son  during  this  Epoch — his  first  aggressive  attack, 
then  the  fluctuating  struggle  in  him  between  the 
anti-traditional  and  traditional  man,  finally  the  re 
action  from  his  earlier  self,  especially  toward  tra 
ditional  Europe. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  three  foregoing 
stages  represent  chiefly  methods  of  presentation,  or 
the  three  Emersonian  art-forms,  which  in  one  way 
or  other  he  will  continue  to  retain  hereafter. 

So  much  for  this  first  line  of  Emerson's  great 
ness,  that  of  Productivity,  running  through  the 


240       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

present  Epoch.  In  accord  with  our  plan,  we  are 
next  to  take  up  a  new  and  parallel  line  of  Emer 
son's  activity,  cotemporaneous  with  what  we  have 
just  seen,  but  very  different. 

Section  B.     Propagation 

"We  have  now  come  to  the  second  great  fact  or 
chain  of  facts,  belonging  to  this  creative  Decen- 
nium,  namely  the  Propagation  of  the  Transcenden 
tal  Idea  which  has  been  born  and  baptized  into  lit 
erary  form — all  of  which  is  supremely  the  work  of 
Emerson.  He  is  the  central  conduit  through  whom 
this  Over-Soul  or  World-Spirit  or  Genius  of  the  Age 
has  streamed  down  into  the  time,  making  it  truly 
the  turn  of  an  Epoch.  Transcendentalism  has  now 
written  itself  out  in  ink  at  the  quiet  Concord  Cas 
tle,  asserting  triumphantly  its  own  freedom,  its  own 
way  of  thinking,  and  its  own  style  of  utterance.  A 
creative  body  of  literature  it  has  created,  whose 
echoes  are  with  us  yet — witness  this  book,  for  in 
stance — and  evidently  are  destined  to  be  heard  roll 
ing  still  a  long  distance  down  the  deeenniums.  We 
may  well  repeat  that  here  has  arisen,  according  to 
present  indications,  the  most  persistent  and  influ 
ential  writing  of  the  literary  sort  that  America  has 
yet  produced — not  the  most  popular,  but  the  most 
persistent  and  deeply  influential. 

It  should  be  re-stated  that  Emerson  looked  upon 
this  movement  as  essentially  religious,  a  kind  of 
new  Reformation,  a  return  to  the  true  and  unde- 
filed,  that  is,  unprescribed  Christianity.  Or  it  was 


PROPAGATION.  241 

the  second  great  Protestantism,  a  revolt  from  the 
existing  transmitted  dogma,  ritual,  forms;  a  fresh 
ascent  to  the  primordial  sources  of  all  faith.  Thus 
it  bore  the  character  of  a  revival  of  religion,  with 
its  enthusiasms  and  excesses,  at  whose  wilder  mani 
festations  Emerson  will  soon  show  disapproval,  if 
not  disgust;  thus  he  will  begin  to  protest  against 
his  own  Protestantism. 

Accordingly,  we  shall  next  pass  to  consider  how 
this  remarkable  binful  of  seed  was  sown  broadcast 
through  the  land  and  made  to  sprout.     Creation, 
otherwise  might  have  been  smothered  in  its  cradle, 
without  propagation.  There  is  no  donbt  the  soil  was 
ready  and  the  means  at  hand.    Boston  lay  near  and 
shot  its  roots  of  publication  not  only  throughout 
New  England,  but  the  whole  country.    Indeed,  it 
was  a  book-producing  town,  and  a  book-loving  com 
munity,  more  famous  for  its  tomes  then  than  now ; 
print-hungry  was  the  town  even  if    critical    and 
querulous.    This  fact  must  not  be  forgotten :    Em 
erson  found  at  his  door  a  ready-made  and  efficient 
means  of  distributing  his  printed  page,  and  of  push 
ing  the  same  to  the  full  periphery  of  his  audience, 
however  small  and  scattered.    "What  he  could  do  in 
this  line  was  seen  in  the  success  with  which  he  ex 
ploited  Carlyle's  early  works  from  Boston,  a  thing 
impossible  in  London  or  anywhere  else.     So  let  it 
be  emphasized  that  the  golden  opportunity  for  dis 
tributing  his  brain-products  was  at  hand  and  work 
ing;  the  psychological  con  juncture    for     propaga 
tion  was  never  quite  so  happy  before  or  since. 


242      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

Still  print  alone  would  not  suffice  unless  workers, 
diligent  and  apostolic,  were  ready  to  prepare  the 
field  for  the  planting  and  the  harvest.  This  brings 
us  .to  another  peculiar  gift  of  Emerson:  he  had  the 
power  to  gather  about  himself  a  devoted  and  able 
apostleship.  His  Castle  was  the  home  of  an  ardent 
band  of  missionaries  who  could  defy  personal  ad 
vantage  for  the  sake  of  the  cause,  though  Emerson 
himself  never  let  the  economic  Devil  catch  him  by 
the  throat.  Thus  he  kept  a  fortress,  and  to  a  cer 
tain  extent  a  free  lunch  for  the  hard-pressed  and 
thriftless  comrade  in  arms.  In  this  respect  also 
Emerson  was  the  luminous  center  from  which  radi 
ated  many  light-giving  minds,  zealous  expositors  of 
the  new  Idea  and  of  themselves. 

So  it  comes  that  we  must  give  some  account  of 
that  branch  of  our  hero 's  biography  which  pertains 
to  the  Emersonian  Apostolate,  wherewith  he  was 
able  to  surround  himself.  Herein  we  may  note  a 
striking  difference  from  the  previous  strand,  from 
his  Productivity,  in  which  he  had  to  be  solitary  and 
to  commune  with  himself,  receiving  the  dictates  of 
the  Over-Soul  into  his  own  single  soul — the  message 
"from  the  Alone  to  the  alone."  But  now  the  out 
side  begins  to  play  in,  associates  join  him  to  carry 
forward  his  gospel.  Hence  this  activity  we  call 
Propagation  as  distinct  from  Productivity.  Char 
acters  now  enter,  unique  of  their  kind;  they  join 
in  the  conflict  of  the  time,  and  produce  an  action 
which  has  its  beginning,  middle  and  end,  or  rise, 
bloom  and  decline,  with  Emerson  as  the  central  fig- 


PROPAGATION. 


243 


tire  or  hero.  We  may  deem  it  a  sort  of  Epic,  the 
Concord  Iliad,  with  its  heroic  Achilles  surrounded 
and  supported  by  other  heroes,  whose  Troy  is  the 
anti-transcendental  Boston,  against  which  chiefly 
is  the  grand  battle.  Further,  we  may  regard  it  a 
Ten  Years'  War,  at  least  as  far  as  Emerson  the 
hero  is  concerned,  whose  work  in  this  line  is  cre 
atively  finished  during  the  present  Decennium. 
Here  then  lies  an  acted  Epic,  whose  poetic  character 
is  what  gives  to  it  an  abiding  interest ;  still  though 
all  its  actors  were  poets,  the  action  was  never  sung 
together,  but  has  reached  us  only  in  many  bright 
shreds  of  verse  and  prose. 

These  characters  which  now  appear  on  the  scene, 
and  become  denizens  of  Emersonopolis,  are  all  in 
themselves  originals,  even  if  satellites  in  the  last 
instance;  each  has  his  or  her  heroic  part  in  this 
grand  conflict,  while  revolving  around  the  central 
luminary.  Both  the  people  and  their  deed  have  be 
come  famous :  I  am  not  certain  but  that  they  form 
the  most  fascinating,  suggestive,  and  truly  poetic  ep 
isode  of  the  entire  Emersoniad.  I  personally  enjoy 
them  as  a  whole  in  action  better  than  their  verses. 
though  these  are  by  no  means  to  be  left  out. 

We  may  group  this  work  of  Propagation  under 
four  heads  or  classes,  each  of  which  'forms  a  dis 
tinctive  branch  of  the  Emersonian  Apostolate. 

1.  The  Transcendental  Circle. 

2.  The  Transcendental  Academy. 

3.  The  Transcendental  Periodical. 

4.  The  Transcendental  Community. 


244       RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

All  these  forms  of  Propagation  were  born  and 
fostered  during  this  wonderfully  Creative  Epoch, 
requiring  an  enormous  outlay  of  energy,  quite  equal 
to  the  intellect  displayed  by  the  Master's  writings 
in  the  line  of  his  Productivity,  of  course  with  less 
lasting  results.  Such  is  indeed  Emerson's  grand 
push  outwards  from  within,  the  sweep  from  his 
Thought  to  his  "Will,  from  Meditation  to  Action. 
Let  the  reader  not  forget  that  these  two  streams  run 
alongside  of  each  other  in  time  through  the  entire 
Decennium,  and  that  they  keep  mutually  intertwin 
ing,  re-acting  one  upon  the  other  all  the  way.  Fi 
nally,  however,  they  must  be  brought  together  and 
be  seen  as  one  Whole  in  the  rounded  Biography  of 
Emerson. 

Moreover,  we  should  note  that  Propagation  in 
volves  some  form  of  man  organized,  and  herein  Em 
erson,  brings  to  light  a  gift  not  seen  prominently  in 
his  writings.  Productivity  is  the  work  of  the  Mind 
individual,  Propagation  is  the  work  of  the  Mind 
associated,  so  that  in  it  the  lone  author  must  give 
up  his  splendid  isolation,  and  unite  in  some  kind 
of  fellowship  with  his  staff  of  propagandists. 

I. 

% 

THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  CIRCLE 

Centered  around  Emerson  was  a  group  of  friends 
and  fellow-workers  of  pronounced  ability  and  indi 
viduality.  Indeed  it  was  his  good-fortune  and  that 
of  his  cause  to  attract  people  of  talent  from  the 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  CIRCLE.  245 

first.  There  was  at  the  start  a  Transcendental  Club 
of  no  small  ability  and  devotion.  We  already  hear 
of  "some  young  men"  in  1835  (see  letter  to  Car- 
lyle,  March  12),  who,  Emerson  says,  are  intending 
to  found  a  Journal  to  be  called  the  Transcendental- 
ist.  Next  year  Dr.  Hedge  dates  the  earliest  origin 
— "we  four,"  then  "some  dozen  of  us,"  then  "a 
large  number  assembled."  Such  were  the  first  of 
a  series  of  meetings  "held  from  time  to  time  as  oc 
casion  prompted  for  seven  or  eight  years."  So  these 
gatherings  quite  overarch  the  present  Decennium, 
and  seemingly  measure  its  growth,  culmination,  and 
decline. 

From  these  people  of  the  Club,  were  gradually 
sifted  out  three  who  may  be  said  to  form  the  inner 
most  Circle  around  Emerson,  who  on  his  side  deeply 
influenced  them,  not  so  much  by  way  of  doctrine  as 
of  stimulation ;  while  they  on  the  other  hand,  being 
original  themselves,  reacted  on  him  in  a  number  of 
important  ways.  Thus  the  fascination  was  mutual : 
Emerson  took  not  a  little  from  them  as  well  as  they 
from  him,  with  reciprocal  appreciation  and  enrich 
ment.  But  he  owned  a  power  which  they  did  not. 
that  of  expression — they  all  wrote  and  spoke  and 
have  left  books,  but  he  is  their  supreme  voice — 
their  glory  is  largely,  though  not  wholly,  a  reflec 
tion  from  his  sun.  These  three  are  Alcott,  Tho- 
reau,  and  Miss  Fuller. 

Perhaps  we  ought  to  say  Circles,  instead  of  Cir 
cle,  for  there  were  more  than  one — several  if  not 
many,  according  to  the  fineness  of  the  lines  of  di- 


246      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

vision.  But  here  we  can  only  take  the  record  of  one 
Circle,  the  nearest  to  the  Center,  and  most  deeply 
inwound  in  the  heart  and  mind  of  its  creator ;  also 
its  members  were  the  most  talented  and  most  fa 
mous  of  the  Apostolate,  truly  sharing  in  the  immor 
tality  of  the  work  and  its  prime  artificer.  Hence 
only  three  of  them  as  designated  we  interlink  in 
this  chain  of  a  Circle. 

Be  it  said  that  while  all  three  receive  radiance 
from  the  central  luminary,  which  eternizes  them  in 
its  deathless  sheen,  each  of  them  shines  also  by  own 
light,  and  with  a  peculiar  lustre.  Stars  they  are, 
lesser  suns,  not  merely  lunar;  in  fact  they  have 
their  own  moons,  often  invisible  except  under  the 
telescope.  This  phenomenon  of  the  Transcendental 
Heaven  is  worth  its  scrutiny. 

It  becomes  us,  therefore,  to  send  our  best  glance 
after  these  three  persons,  asking  the  triple  ques 
tion  :  What  did  he  (she  included)  get'from  Emer 
son,  What  did  he  give  to  Emerson,  .What  did  he 
have  in  his  own  individual  right,  as  distinct  from 
Emerson  and  the  rest  of  the  group. 

I.  A.  Bronson  Alcott.  We  are  somewhat  aston 
ished  at  the  amount  and  the  height  of  praise  which 
Emerson  bestows  upon  Alcott  in  his  Diary.  To  be 
sure  he  gives  many  a  sharp  counterstroke  to  his 
laudation;  he  perhaps  undervalued  Alcott  as  a 
writer,  but  overvalued  him  as  a  thinker,  or  as  a 
thinking  talker.  There  was,  accordingly,  a  peculiar 
personal  appeal  in  Alcott 's  doctrine  for  Emerson. 
This  doctrine  was  distictively  the  lapse,  the  descent 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  CIRCLE.  247 

of  all  Creation  down  to  its  negative  extreme  just 
through  creation.  It  would  seem  that  Alcott,  more 
than  any  other  person  represented  to  Emerson  the 
living  embodiment  of  the  Oversoul  with  its  down- 
flow  into  speech,  for  he  always  spoke  of  Alcott 's 
talk  as  directly  inspired  from  the  supernal  sources, 
denying  to  him  at  the  same  time  the  ability  to 
write — the  Oversoul  could  not  push  through  the 
pen-point  in  his  case.  Emanation  lay  at  the  basis 
of  Alcott 's  world-view,  and  thus  he  became  in  him 
self  a  striking  illustration  of  the  grand  Lapse  of 
Man — a  Lapse  of  the  Alcottian  mind  to  the  Orient, 
where  Emanation  is  properly  at  home.  In  this  ret 
rograde  movement  Alcott  carried  Emerson  with 
him,  though  by  no  means  completely ;  for  the  latter 
still  clung  to  evolution,  or  the  ascent  of  man  versus 
his  descent — which  is  essentially  an  Occidental 
thought  and  practice. 

This.  Oriental  stream  was,  however,  decidedly  col 
ored  and  in  part  transformed  on  its  way  to  Concord 
by  the  Hellenic  Neo-Platonists  who  started  at  Alex 
andria  in  the  Third  Century  A.  D.  We  hear  Emer 
son  call  Alcott  a  living  Plato ;  did  he  not  mean  a 
living  Plotinus  ?  At  any  rate  we  have  the  right  to 
see  the  influence  of  Alcott  in  that  very  Plotinian 
Essay  of  Emerson,  which  we  have  already  consid 
ered — the  Oversoul,  and  doubtless  in  some  other 
productions. 

II.  Henry  David  Thoreau.  Of  all  the  members 
of  the  Circle,  Thoreau  has  won  this  special  distinc 
tion:  his  work  has  shown  itself  after  his  death  to 


248      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

possess  the  greatest  growing  power.  His  writings, 
quite  unsaleable  and  unappreciated  during  his  life 
time,  are  now  printed  in  edition  after  edition,  while 
his  manuscripts  have  been  given  to  the  public  by 
publishers  volume  on  volume.  A  cult  of  Thoreau 
with  a  special  propagandism  seems  to  have  arisen. 
While  he  had  breath  in  his  body,  he  deemed  himself 
a  failure  as  a  writer ;  still  he  wrote  on  with  an  all- 
coercive  need  of  self-expression  which  has  been 
strangely  found  to  be  universal  and  immortal.  To 
some  minds  he  has  even  grown  to  be  the  rival  of 
Emerson  himself. 

Thoreau 's  tendency  was  on  the  whole  opposite  to 
that  of  Alcott,  to  whom  Nature  was  the  lowest  ema 
nation,  or  the  real  degradation  of  God's  creative 
power.  The  contrary  was  the  movement  and  indeed 
the  world- view  of  Thoreau :  Nature  was  for  him  the 
divine  appearance  itself,  with  which  he  incessantly 
held  communion. 

The  most  famous  deed  of  Thoreau  is  coupled  with 
this  doctrine :  his  flight  back  to  Nature,  with  whom 
he  would  live  in  immediate  embrace,  distant  from 
artificial  society.  So  he  betook  himself  to  his  hut 
and  potato-hole  on  the  shore  of  Walden  Pond,  even 
away  from  the  free  household  of  Emerson.  Alcott, 
however,  proposed  to  associate  the  individual  man 
in  a  new  society.  Thoreau,  be  it  said,  returned  to 
home  and  to  Emerson  after  his  daring  experiment. 

Emerson  was  deeply  sympathetic  with  Thoreau 's 
bent,  as  we  may  see  in  his  first  printed  book,  called 
Nature.  In  him  the  Oversoul  (Alcott)  and  the  Un- 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  CIRCLE. 


249 


dersoul  (Thoreau)  lay  alongside  of  each  other,  out 
wardly  in  peace,  if  not  inwardly  reconciled.  We 
may  easily  point  out  the  two  strands  in  separate 
Essays  of  Emerson,  perhaps  here  and  there  in  the 
same  Essay. 

III.  Margaret  Fuller  (Ossoli).  Here  enters  the 
woman  of  the  Concord  Epic,  and  a  mighty  figure 
she  towers.  Indeed  she  seems  to  us  the  strongest 
personality  of  the  Circle,  with  the  greatest  native 
power,  verily  a  Titanic  character.  She  remained  in 
close  companionship  with  Emerson  during  this 
whole  Creative  Decennium,  and,  as  he  recognized, 
she  stimulated  enormously  his  productivity.  Also 
she  aided  him  practically  in  the  work  of  propaga 
tion;  for  instance  she  edited  the  Dial  for  two  years 
without  remuneration.  However  she  herself  could 
not  write  in  proportion  to  her  ability ;  the  Titaness 
was  unable  to  erupt  her  full  native  energy  into  her 
written  word.  She  confesses :  "I  shall  never  be  an 
artist,  I  have  no  patient  love  of  execution."  She, 
too,  lacked  the  power  of  organization. 

With  her,  then,  enters  into  the  Transcendental 
Circle  that  deepest  underlying  motive-power  of 
Human  Nature,,  namely  sex,  which  thus  has  both 
its  phases  (or  its  dualism)  represented  in  this  move 
ment.  With  all  her  intellect  Margaret  Fuller  was 
at  last  an  emotional  being  dominated  by  love  in 
some  of  its  subtle  shapes.  Here  lies  in  our  judg 
ment  the  ground  of  her  profound  appreciation  of 
Goethe,  whom  Emerson  never  could  quite  under 
stand,  still  less  accept. 


250      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  SECOND. 

Certain  lines  or  tendencies  in  Emerson's  Essays 
one  may  identify  with  Miss  Fuller's  influence.  On 
the  other  hand  she  was  trained  by  the  Master  and 
the  time  into  her  original  power.  Still  she  fell  out 
with  Transcendentalism,  and  shared  in  the  reaction 
against  it,  which  we  have  also  noticed  in  Emerson. 
The  result  was  a  flight  from  Boston  to  New  York 
and  then  to  Europe,  which  has  its  parallel  in  the 
career  of  Thoreau  and  also  of  Emerson,  for  the  lat 
ter  likewise  went  back  to  Europe  about  this  same 
time  or  a  little  later  (1847). 

But  Margaret  Fuller  never  returned  out  of  her 
separation  from  her  city  and  country.  She  per 
ished  of  shipwreck  in  New  York  harbor,  at  forty 
years  of  age,  just  in  the  act  of  getting  back.  Thus 
her  round  of  life  never  had  its  completion  such  as 
we  see  in  Emerson.  She  is  truly  the  tragic  charac 
ter  of  the  set,  the  woman  of  the  dark  fate  which  we 
are  inclined  to  trace  in  her  very  self  all  her  living 
days.  She  never  came  to  fulfilment,  yet  Emerson 
has  devoted  to  her  his  longest  and  most  loving  biog 
raphy,  which  likewise  has  a  pronounced  undercur 
rent  of  autobiography,  whereby  it  becomes  doubly 
suggestive. 

Such  is  the  Transcendental  Circle  of  three  strong 
characters — all  of  them  possessing  genius  in  their 
own  special  lines — they  revolve  about  Emerson  at 
Concord  in  their  highest  radiance  during  his  pres 
ent  creative  Epoch.  All  three  were  very  different, 
yet  seem  in  one  process  moving  together ;  in  doc 
trine  Alcott  dwelt  upon  the  divine,  Thoreau  upon 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  ACADEMY.          251 

the  physical,  Miss  Fuller  upon  the  human.  Thus 
Emerson  had  in  his  presence  beaming  into  his  coun 
tenance  personal  representatives  of  God,  Nature, 
and  Man,  the  three  prime  constituents  of  the  Uni 
verse. 

II. 

THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  ACADEMY 

All  three  members  of  the  foregoing  Circle  had 
been  school-teachers — Alcott,  Thoreau,  Miss  Fuller 
— and  Emerson  himself  had  gone  through  a  consid 
erable  pedagogical  experience,  some  of  it  reaching 
down  to  the  bottom  of  the  ladder.  It  was,  there 
fore,  quite  natural  that  these  teachers  should  think 
of  a  school  for  their  doctrine  as  one  means  of  its 
Propagation.  And  as  they  were  all  studying  and 
dreaming  over  old  Plato,  they  could  not  help  fan- 
tasying  an  educative  instituion  like  the  Platonic 
Academe,  to  be  re-constituted  in  Concord  or  some 
where  in  its  neighborhood.  Moreover,  had  not 
something  similar  been  done  in  Florence  during  the 
Italian  Renascence  ?  Some  such  scheme  hovered  en 
ticingly  before  the  Transcendental  mind,  especially 
during  the  present  Decennium,  so  prodigiously 
prolific  and  eruptive  in  every  direction. 

As  an  additional  incentive  for  Emerson,  we  are 
reminded  that  he  was  at  this  time  practically  ex 
cluded  from  all  the  schools  of  Education  in  and 
around  Boston,  headed  by  Harvard  College,  his  own 
alma  mater,  not  now  in  a  very  maternal  mood  to- 


252      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

ward  her  greatest  son  on  account  of  his  affection 
ate  trouncing  of  her  theologians  in  his  Divinity 
Class  Address.  So  he  was  ready  to  found  his  own 
University,  and  direct  it  from  his  Castle  of  Defi 
ance.  Alcott  's  school  in  Boston,  in  which  the  latter 
had  attempted  to  start  a  new  pedagogy,  had  sunk 
under  a  load  of  public  obloquy,  and  for  some  years 
he  had  taken  up  his  residence  at  Concord  just 
across  the  street  from  Emerson.  So  it  comes  that 
we  hear  of  the  following  scheme  in  a  letter  of  Em 
erson  under  the  date  of  August  16,  1840. 

"  Alcott  and  I  projected  the  other  day  a  whole 
University  out  of  our  straws.  Do  you  not  wish  that 
I  should  advertise  it  in  The  Dial?'9  This  period 
ical  was  just  then  under  way  with  Margaret  Fuller 
as  editor,  to  whom  the  foregoing  letter  was  ad 
dressed.  The  locality  was  to  be  "some  country 
town,  say  Concord  or  Hyannis,"  not  in  any  large 
city,  above  all,  not  in  Boston;  "we  will  hold  a  se 
mester  for  the  instruction  of  young  men,  say  from 
October  to  April" — a  winter  school  of  Philosophy 
in  which  each  professor  "shall  announce  his  own 
subject  and  topics,  with  what  detail  he  pleases,  and 
hold,  say  two  lectures  or  conversations  therein  each 
week. ' '  A  very  free  curriculum  both  for  instructor 
and  pupil — each  is  to  learn  and  to  teach  quite  what 
and  as  he  chooses.  Even  the  fee  is  not  rigidly  fixed, 
but  left  to  the  conscience  of  the  student  who  is  to 
pay  ' '  according  to  his  sense  of  benefit  received  and 
his  means."  This  was  to  be  the  new  enfranchised 
University,  built  to  *  *  front  the  world  without  char- 


THK  TRANSCENDENTAL  .\CADRMY.          253 

ter,  diploma,  corporation  or  steward."  Such  was 
the  defiant  liberty  of  the  coming  education,  which 
here  seeks  to  establish  an  institution  quite  hostile 
to  the  transmitted  institution.  Emerson  urges  Miss 
Puller  who  now  seems  a  part  of  his  every  plan :  "  Do 
you  not  wish  to  come  here  and  join  in  such  a 
work?"  For  it  would  "anticipate  by  years  the  ed 
ucation  of  New  England."  He  does  not  expect  a 
large  attendance:  "some  twenty  or  thirty  stu 
dents  at  first."  (Cabot's  Emerson,  II,  p.  409.) 

Such  a  plan  we  may  wonder  at  as  another  prod 
uct  of  the  furious  fertility  of  Emerson 's  brain  dur 
ing  this  wildly  feracious  Epoch.  Moreover  such  a 
scheme  has  a  social  trend  like  all  his  thoughts  and 
actions  of  the  present  time.  He  closes  his  letter 
with  an  outburst  of  social  hope:  "We  shall  sleep 
no  more,  and  we  shall  concert  better  houses,  eco 
nomics,  and  social  modes  than  any  we  have  seen." 
Prophetic  of  the  Now,  if  nothing  else. 

Emerson  is,  of  course,  to  be  one  of  the  Professors, 
and  it  is  suggestive  to  see  what  department  of  in 
struction  he  prefers.  This  he  sets  down  as  his  self- 
chosen  curriculum:  "Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
Percy's  Reliques,  Rhetoric  and  Belles  Lettres. " 
Not  Philosophy  but  Rhetoric  with  Poetry  is  his  fa 
vorite  branch — a  peculiar  choice;  yet  he  has  said 
more  than  once  that  a  professorship  of  Rhetoric 
would  be  his  preferred  vocation  for  life.  More 
strange  still  seems  his  selection  of  the  Elizabethan 
Dramatists,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  over  the  far 
greater  William  Shakespeare.  Indeed  we  have  to 


254      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

think  from  this  and  other  indications  scattered 
through  his  writings,  that  Emerson  in  his  heart 
loved  and  appreciated  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  bet 
ter  than  (Shakespeare.  Some  reasons  for  this  sin 
gular  preference  might  be  hunted  up,  but  they 
would  carry  us  too  far  to  one  side. 

The  plan  for  such  an  Academy  was  never  real 
ized,  but  the  idea  remained,  and  has  become  exceed 
ingly  fruitful,  being  at  work  still  today.  Here  in 
deed  rises  a  view  of  Education  which  has  not  yet 
been  overtaken,  the  idea  of  the  free,  or  as  we  may 
call  it,  the  new  Communal  University  as  distinct 
from  the  old  transmitted,  essentially  European 
University,  which  still  dominates  our  American  ed 
ucational  world.  A  free  faculty,  free  courses  of 
study,  free  students,  a  free  society;  then  such  an 
University  should  be  everywhere,  in  every  commu 
nity  which  will  take  the  trouble  to  establish  it  and 
pursue  universal  studies  in  an  universal  way,  mak 
ing  a  University  which  is  truly  universal.  That 
Emersonian  plan  had  its  shortcomings  and  serious 
omissions ;  still  we  may  think  of  Alcott,  Miss  Fuller, 
and  especially  of  Emerson  as  teachers  in  such  a 
school,  with  lectures,  readings  and  conversations 
which  were  the  instruments  for  inserting  a  spile 
into  that  upper  original  Energy  and  making  it 
flow  down  at  first  hand  to  the  participants.  The 
old  traditional  humdrum  of  drill,  recitation,  and 
mechanical  device  would  be  supplemented  by  the 
direct  downflow  from  the  primal  fountain  of  cre 
ative  power.  Some  such  idea  was  now  rife  and 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  ACADEMY.          255 

throbbing  in  the  time ;  Emerson  and  his  Circle  re 
sponded  to  it  in  this  scheme,  truly  the  ideal  school 
of  idealism,  which  has  never  quite  lapsed,  though 
it  has  never  quite  succeeded  in  getting  itself  born. 
Alcott  especially  would  not  give  up  the  idea;  in 
deed  he  first  started  it  after  an  infantile  fashion  in 
Boston,  whereof  we  may  still  read  in  his  somewhat 
forgotten  book  called  the  Record  of  a  School,  though 
its  germinal  suggestion  remains  and  is  unfolded  in 
the  recent  flowering  of  child-welfare  and  child-edu 
cation.  The  Kindergarden,  in  the  history  of  its 
American  evolution,  cannot  leave  out  Alcott 's  pro 
phetic  experiment.  In  fact,  Alcott  was  more  the 
teacher  than  the  writer;  his  Genius  would  pour 
forth  freely  from  the  tip  of  his  tongue,  but  hesi 
tated  to  flow  through  his  quill  into  ink. 

How  persistent  this  idea  of  a  Transcendental 
Academy  continued,  may  be  seen  in  the  Concord 
School  of  Philosophy,  which  came  to  fruitage  many 
years  later.  Emerson  was  still  alive  at  the  begin 
ning  of  it,  but  quite  out  of  harness;  Alcott,  how 
ever,  remained,  though  very  old,  and  retained  a 
good  fragment  of  his  pristine  vigor.  Younger  men, 
Sanborn,  Harris,  Emery,  took  hold  of  the  plan  and 
realized  it  in  spite  of  a  storm  of  Yankee  ridicule  like 
to  that  which  Emerson  had  to  weather  some  forty 
years  before.  But  this  school  also  went  through  its 
rise,  bloom,  and  evanishment. 

But  altogether  the  most  important  and  influential 
phase  of  the  Transcendental  Academy  was  when  it 
broke  loose  from  its  fixed  locality  in  the  East  and 


256      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  SECOND. 

began  to  wander  Westward,  especially  in  the  per 
sons  of  its  two  chief  protagonists,  Emerson  and  Al- 
cott.  In  the  first  place  both  of  the  Apostles  have 
declared  that  these  trips  to  the  new  America  away 
from  the  old  colonial  States  gave  them  fresh  hope 
and  strength  for  their  cause.  Indeed  it  seems  that 
without  this  renewed  effluence  from  the  younger 
part  of  the  nation,  the  movement  might  have  wilted 
in  the  bud.  Both  were  to  a  degree  recreated  in 
mind  as  well  as  replenished  with  cash  from  that 
new-born  spirit  in  the  Great  Valley.  So  they  have 
indicated  from  their  side.  On  the  other  hand,  their 
doctrines  were  sown  far  and  wide  over  the  recep 
tive  and  fertile  prairies. 

The  Emersonian  Lyceum,  as  it  came  to  be  often 
called,  was  in  space  as  well  as  in  spirit  a  kind  of 
universal  University,  overflowing  the  Alleghenies 
to  the  Mississippi,  and  then  sweeping  across  that 
turbid  boundary-line  toward  the  Rockies.  In  most 
towns  of  importance,  the  cultivated  people  had 
heard  Emerson  lecture,  had  felt  the  presence  of  the 
man  even  when  they  did  not  fully  understand  him, 
and  had  caught  some  little  whiff  of  that  downflow 
which  he  not  only  indoctrinated  but  incarnated.  So 
he  continued  his  trips  for  many  years — such  was 
probably  his  most  significant  work  after  his  Crea 
tive  Decennium — till  finally  old  age  retired  him  full 
of  honors.  Then  his  books  picked  up  his  task,  and 
became  his  best  propagandists,  with  an  ever-multi 
plying  harvest  to  this  day. 
"  Alcott  followed  his  friend  to  the  West  but 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  ACADEMY.          257 

wrought  on  somewhat  different  lines.  His  prelec 
tions  he  called  conversations,  which  were  usually 
held  in  private  parlors,  and  took  a  wide  range  from 
the  philosophy  of  the  Lapse  to  Thoreau's  shack  on 
Walden  Pond.  A  tall  impressive  figure  he  would 
stride  across  the  room  and  take  his  seat  in  the  large 
philosophic  chair,  with  reverend  gray  locks  fall 
ing  to  his  shoulders,  and  with  ashen  features,  out 
of  which  at  times  he  would  roll  his  eyes  upward  as 
if  in  a  kind  of  worship.  Somehow  he  looked  his 
own  doctrine  of  emanation,  and  this  you  might  also 
hear  in  his  rather  sepulchral  voice  which  had  an 
unearthly  note,  yet  cannily  shot  through  with  jets 
of  Yankee  humor  and  even  laughter.  Alcott  had 
always  his  elect  who  found  their  best  reflection  in 
his  manner  and  method.  He  loved  to  linger  and 
talk  with  you — a  genuine  conversationist ;  he  would 
often  stay  a  week  in  one  place,  and  see  everybody 
who  paid  a  contribution.  Alcott  was  much  more 
democratic  in  manner  than  Emerson,  who  could 
not  quite  let  down  the  bars  even  when  he  tried 
hardest — which  was  not  always. 

Such,  then,  was  this  phase  of  the  grand  Propaga 
tion,  probably  the  most  wide-spread  and  lasting  of 
all.  Moreover  it  gives  some  hint,  even  if  remote,  of 
the  distinctive  American  University  which  is  to  be, 
in  contrast  with  the  European  model  now  thriving 
upon  our  soil,  yet  with  strong  inner  questionings 
and  even  loud  protests  within  its  own  rarks  of 
teachers  and  taught. 


258      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 
III. 

THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MAGAZINE 

Needed  a  periodical,  a  review,  a  storehouse  for 
gathering  all  the  more  characteristic  products  of 
the  new  Energy  and  dispersing  them  among  the 
great  public  at  regular  intervals — such  a  plan  had 
hovered  before  Emerson  from  the  first  year  of  this 
Epoch,  yet  had  never  come  to  fruition.  But  finally 
appears  in  July,  1840,  the  first  number  of  The  Dial, 
a  name  somewhat  ambiguous,  especially  if  we  com 
pare  it  with  the  first-proposed  title.  The  Transcen 
dent  alist,  of  which  Emerson  had  spoken  some  five 
years  before.  This  change  of  label  has  its  signifi 
cance,  the  new  movement  is  no  longer  so  fiery  in  its 
challenge  as  it  was,  but  seems  inclined  to  mask 
its  battery. 

Still  the  conception  remains  and  is  carried  out : 
namely  a  continuous  bombardment  by  Transcen 
dental  guns  against  the  walls  of  Philistinism.  It  is 
to  be  an  armory  for  every  kind  of  literary  weapon 
minute  and  mighty — from  Alcott's  little  bird-shot 
of  Orphic  sayings  (usually  falling  short  of  any  dis 
cernible  game)  to  Emerson's  far-sounding  can- 
nonry,  which  scores  on  the  whole  the  best  hits  and 
certainly  the  most  lasting,  of  the  Magazine.  Be 
sides  these  two  were  other  contributors  little  known 
and  well-known ;  among  whom  Emerson  introduces 
a  new  name  with  one  of  his  prophetic  glimpses: 
"My  Henry  Thoreau  will  be  a  great  poet  for  such 
a  company,  and  some  day  for  all  companies. ' '  This 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MAGAZINE.         259 

from  a  letter  of  1839  when  Thoreau  was  hardly  of 
age. 

So  another  grand  scheme  of  Propagation  is 
launched  just  about  in  the  middle  and  the  bloom  of 
this  specially  Transcendental  Decennium.  Emer 
son  was  the  chief  source  of  the  plan  and  its  main 
supporter;  he  was  its  natural  editor  on  account  of 
his  ability,  prominence,  leisure,  and  detachment; 
moreover  the  movement  of  which  it  was  to  be  the 
mouthpiece,  was  his  creatively,  and  it  openly  called 
him  father.  But  he  strongly  declares:  "I  never 
will  be  editor"-— whereof  he  will  later  repent.  It 
was  seen  from  the  start  to  be  a  hardy,  if  not  fool 
hardy  enterprise ;  so  he  and  the  other  brave  Tran 
scendental  male  fighters  shifted  the  charge  to  the 
shoulders  of  a  woman,  Margaret  Fuller,  who  was 
appointed  editor  arid  courageously  clung  to  the 
drifting  craft  for  two  years,  being  paid  not  in 
money  but  abundantly  in  defamation.  Nobody 
liked  it,  the  newspapers  jeered  at  it,  even  Emerson 
criticized  it,  and  the  subscriptions  kept  falling  off. 
After  two  years  Miss  Fuller  threw  up  the  job,  both 
moneyless  and  thankless,  and  started  her  famous 
talks  in  Boston,  which  at  least  gave  her  some  bread. 
Herein  as  elsewhere  she  shows  herself  the  most  dar 
ing  mortal  of  the  lot,  most  emancipated,  most  defi 
ant,  verily  the  Transcendental  Titaness,  but  never 
in  this  life  destined  to  transcend  her  Titanism,  with 
which  she  sank  in  New  York  Harbor. 

But  what  is  now  to  become  of  the  orphaned  Dial? 
It  has  made  itself  alreadv  a  distinct  landmark  in 


260      RALPH   \\'\U><)  EMERSON— PAR  f  SECOND. 

the  Propagation  of  the  cause,  and  its  work  seems 
hardly  yet  done.  Naturally  the  abandoned  child 
falls  back  upon  its  original  parent,  and  calls  for  his 
saving  help.  His  Diary  shows  him  balancing :  ' '  the 
Dial  is  to  be  sustained  or  ended ;  and  I  must  settle 
the  question,  it  seems,  of  its  life  or  death.  I  wish 
it  to  live,  but  do  not  wish  to  be  its  life" — which 
means,  that  he  would  like  to  escape  its  editorship. 
But  not  another  man  or  woman  can  now  be  found 
to  handle  the  thing,  so  Emerson  with  great  reluc 
tance  takes  hold,  and  keeps  the  Magazine  alive  two 
years  longer.  Then  in  1844  he  lets  go  the  rudder, 
and  makes  for  land  in  his  life-boat,  expecting  the 
sea-worthless  wreck  to  sink  to  the  bottom  at  once. 
But  no !  it  .floats,  and  keeps  floating  down  the 
stream  of  time,  with  a  strangely  increasing  vitality ; 
the  phenomenon  is  that  the  old  corpse  of  the  de 
funct  Dial  has  more  life  today  than  when  it  was 
alive  (shown  by  citation  and  reprint). 

To  us  the  most  significant  fact  about  the  Dial  is 
that  here  is  a  magazine  which  simply  denies  and 
defies  the  very  principle  of  all  Magazinism.  It  was 
in  itself  an  Emersonian  Castle  of  Defiance  realized 
in  a  periodical,  and  quite  disregarding  every  sort 
of  public,  even  its  own,  without  any  consideration 
of  money,  influence  or  fame.  This  character  makes 
it  probably  the  unique  magazine  of  the  world — a 
popular  journal  scouting  all  popularity  for  the 
sake  of  the  Idea.  That  is  why  it  is  more  alive  today, 
more  read,  cited,  and  republished  than  at  its  birth 
or  during  its  very  precarious  existence.  And  not 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MAGAZINE.         261 

its  matter  has  preserved  it;  what  it  says  is  not  of 
the  newest  or  of  the  best,  and  can  be  found  better 
elsewhere ;  on  the  whole,  its  articles  taken  by  them 
selves  are  not  of  the  time-defying  sort,  not  even 
Emerson's,  and  still  they  have  defied  time  with  an 
ever-increasing  triumph.  Its  spirit,  its  presiding 
Genius,  though  in  a  very  fragile  yea  slowly  dying 
body,  has  not  only  embalmed  it,  but  has  given  to  it 
a  new  and  vigorous  resurrection. 

Some  such  prophetic  glimpse  Emerson  must  have 
caught  of  his  consumptive  bantling  after  its  two 
years'  life-trial.  Hence  he  felt  that  he  dared  not 
let  this  triumph  of  his  Oversoul  (for  such  he  may 
well  have  regarded  it)  perish  through  lack  of  sus 
tenance,  though  so  frail  of  external  life.  Possibly 
it  was  just  this  contrast  between  body  and  spirit 
which  fascinated  him  as  a  picture  of  his  own  deep 
est  human  experience.  At  any  rate  with  a  coercive 
sympathy  he  picks  up  the  dear  little  starved  weak 
ling  and  nurses  it  two  years  longer  out  of  his  own 
brain  and  purse,  so  as  to  secure  to  it  immortal  life 
even  after  its  natural  death.  Hence  it  comes  that 
you  and  I  today  are  thumbing  this  old  Dial  of 
nearly  four  score  years,  not  so  much  for  any  single 
article  (which  we  do  in  the  case  of  other  magazines) 
as  for  the'  whole  of  it :  we  seek  to  know  and  to  com 
mune  with  the  soul  of  the  total  work. 

It  is  a  noteworthy  fact  that  the  only  success  re 
corded  in  the  life  of  the  Magazine  was  Theodore 
Parker's  lecture  on  a  local  church  squabble,  which 


262      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  SECOND. 

sold  the  entire  issue,  and  created  calls  for  more 
copies.  Very  ephemeral  and  Bostonian  was  the  cir 
cumstance,  and  that  number  was  probably  the  most 
magazinish  of  the  whole  sixteen ;  but  who  cares  for 
it  now  except  to  sharpen  the  contrast  of  its  own  in 
significance?  It  is  said  that  Emerson  at  first  de 
clined  this  article,  feeling  doubtless  its  vigorous 
mortality  but  its  very  frail  immortality. 

Thus  into  the  world  is  born  a  periodical  which 
proposes  to  take  its  standpoint  in  the  thing  to  be 
done  and  not  in  the  public  to  be  pleased.  Emer 
son  hoists  the  motive :  "  It  does  not  seem  worth  our 
while  to  work  with  any  other  than  sovereign  aims ' ' 
— a  purpose  contradictory  to  the  nature  of  the  mag 
azine,  newspaper  or  periodical  in  general.  The  man 
who  dares  write  books  may  take  such  a  high  stand, 
hardly  the  article-maker  who  scribbles  for  bread  in 
the  Review.  And  even  Emerson  would  come  down 
a  little :  "It  should  be  a  degree  nearer  to  the  hodi 
ernal  facts  than  my  writings  are"  in  book-form. 

Tell  us  which  of  the  hundreds  of  Magazines  shoot 
ing  up  around  us  at  present,  will  survive  such  an  or 
deal  of  edacious  Time  ?  If  there  be  one,  it  is  prob 
ably  the  least  known  and  the  least  food-winning 
just  now.  The  Periodical  is  constitutionally  the 
ephemeral  record  of  the  Ephemeral,  and  lives  its 
own  character  just  by  dying  on  time.  But  the  Dial, 
by  defiantly  running  into  the  clutches  of  death, 
wins  immortal  life.  This  was,  however,  Emerson's 
eternizing  Epoch;  just  during  the  Dial's  gestation 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  MAGAZINE.         263 

and  birth  (1839-184.1)  he  was  producing  his  great 
est  book,  the  First  Series  of  Essays,  none  of  which 
appeared  in  the  Dial,  though  its  early  numbers 
must  have  been  forged  in  the  same  cotemporaneous 
smithy.  It  would  seem  that  he  then  regarded  his 
book  as  his  immortal  portion,  not  the  magazine. 
Still  he  could  not  help  himself;  every  work  which 
he  produced  during  this  Creative  Decennium  bears 
the  same  eternal  stamp  of  his  genius. 

When  the  Dial  started  in  1840,  the  new  doctrine 
had  been  already  proclaiming  itself  with  no  little 
noise  and  self-assertion  on  the  part  of  the  new  dis 
ciples.  Then  Emerson's  Divinity  Class  Address 
had  roiled  all  New  England  Clericalism,  orthodox 
and  heterodox,  against  the  master.  The  result  was 
that  Transcendentalism  was  getting  a  little  timid 
about -itself,  especially  about  its  name.  The  down 
right  truth-telling  headline  for  the  new  periodical 
would  have  been  The  Transcenelentalist ;  "but  such 
a  label  would  now  have  damned  the  whole  enter 
prise  from  its  birth.  Alcott,  otherwise  the  uncom 
promising,  has  the  credit  of  having  suggested  the 
rather  Orphic  title,  The  Dial/which  has  been  vari 
ously  repeated. 

The  cessation,  of  the  Periodical  (1844)  marks  also 
a  change  in  Emerson,  especially  in  his  attitude  to 
ward  his  own  movement.  Already  we  have  noted 
how  disgusted  he  has  become  with  many  of  his  dis 
ciples  and  their  excesses  or  what  he  deemed  such. 
The  magician  is  in  a  state  of  pronounced  reaction 


264      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

against  the  flood  which  he  has  let  in,  but  cannot 
now  turn  off.  And  he  thinks  of  flight,  quitting  the 
scene  of  his  own  disillusion.  Transcendentalism 
had  become  comic  to  the  public,  and  even  to  itself ; 
we  learn  that  some  of  its  most  fervent  disciples  took 
pastime  in  jollying  one  another  about  their  own  fol 
lies,  and  in  burlesquing  the  burlesque  of  the  thing. 
Yea,  Emerson  himself  failed  not  to  let  gush  his 
numerous  sap,  which  would  show  a  satirical  flavor, 
such  as  we  detect  in  his  Address  on  New  England 
Reformers,  which  belongs  to  this  time  (1844).  Evi 
dently  the  Creative  Decennium  is  decidedly  ebbing 
after  its  mighty  overflow. 

Thus  the  Transcendental  Magazine  concludes  its 
annual  life,  and  unexpectedly  becomes  perennial, 
even  after  sinking  under  the  deluge  of  Yankee 
fault-finding,  an  unparalleled  gift  in  that  part  of 
our  diversely  endowed  country.  Significant  is  the 
criticism  of  Carlyle  :-"for  me  it  is  too  ethereal,  spec 
ulative,  theoretic' '  (Letter  to  Emerson,  1840)  ;  still 
another:  "the  Dial,  too,  it  is  all  spirit-like,  aeri 
form,  aurora  boreal is-like."  "Which  tells  somewhat 
of  Emerson,  but  more  of  Carlyle  the  writer,  who 
now  shows  himself  very  different  from  the  Sartor 
of  some  "ten  years  before  at  Craigenputtock.  He 
also  has  turned  a  new  Epoch  in  London. 

Carlyle  vociferates :  Come  down  from  your  cas 
tellated  defiant  heights,  descend  into  the  world,  into 
life,  and  make  it  over,  0  Emerson.  Just  that  in 
deed  is  the  next  scene  in  the  Transcendental  drama. 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  COMMUNITY.       265 
IV. 

THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  COMMUNITY 

Somewhere  in  that  all-prolific  time  around  and 
between  the  two  dates  1840-1841,  rises  to  view  an 
other  scheme,  or  even  series  of  schemes,  which  in 
general  we  name  the  Transcendental  Community — 
the  attempt  to  reconstruct  the  entire  social  fabric 
of  man  in  accord  with  the  new  Idea.  For  this  plan 
was,  in  its  present  shape,  a  genuine  offshoot  of  the 
central  movement,  which  it  proposed  to  realize  in 
a  living  and  lasting  communal  organism — the  high 
est  form  which  the  work  could  take. 

Nor  should  we  fail  to  note  that  this  upburst  is 
contemporaneous  with  so  many  other  original  en 
terprises  of  the  time ;  it  runs  almost  even  with  the 
appearance  of  the  Academy,  of  the  Magazine,  of  the 
Essays,  of  the  Four  Addresses.  A  colossal  erup 
tion  of  the  Transcendental  volcano  burst  forth  with 
a  furious  energy  of  world-making — we  may  call  this 
the  most  creative  year  of  Emerson 's  most  creative 
Epoch.  Still  Emerson  himself  shrank  in  action 
from  this  last  outcome  of  Emersonianism.  Practi 
cally  he  refused  to  take  the  step,  though  theoret 
ically  he  clung  to  the  Idea  and  applauded  the  doers, 
even  while  he  refuses  to  do. 

•  The  work,  then,  of  Transcendental  Propagation 
shows  both  its  causative  power  and  its  resulting  ef 
fect  at  the  highest  in  its  grandiose  scheme  of  re 
forming  the  entire  Institutional  World.  Family, 
Society,  State,  Church,  School,  were  all  to  be  over- 


266      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

hauled  and  transformed  in  accord  with  the  new  doc 
trine.  Such  was  the  last  outcome  of  the  complete 
break  with  tradition. 

This  movement  was  thus  a  part  of  a  great  fer 
ment  of  the  time  which  was  making  a  radical  social 
protest  against  the  old  transmitted  order.  America 
long  before  the  rise  of  Transcendentalism  had  been 
the  free  field  for  communistic  experiments  on  ac 
count  of  the  abundance  of  land,  for  the  Community 
goes  back  primarily  to  the  soil.  Mr.  Nordhoff  some 
years  ago  counted  more  than  a  hundred  such  com 
munities  in  America,  having  mainly  a  religious  ori 
gin,  but  cutting  loose  from  Church,  State,  and  Fam 
ily,  in  general  a  revolt  from  the  regular  social  es 
tablishment.  Indeed  we  have  a  communistic  ex 
periment  in  Plato's  Republic,  and  in  the  earliest 
Christian  community  of  the  New  Testament. 

Thus  the  Transcendental  Brook  Farm  has  a  very 
ancient  pedigree  with  many  cognate  branches 
shooting  down  the  ages.  .Still  it  had  its  distinctive 
character  even  as  a  community.  For  the  commu 
nistic  scheme  is  an  autocracy,  however  mild  this  may 
be.  Mr.  Nordhoff,  making  a  wide  generalization 
from  many  instances  emphatically  declares  that 
"the  fundamental  principle  of  communal  life  is  the 
subordination  of  the  individual  will  to  the  general 
interest  Or  the  general  will, ' '  which  is  vested  in  the 
arbitrary  power  of  one  head.  Hence  communal 
government  ' '  takes  the  shape  of  unquestioning  obe 
dience  of  the  members  toward  the  elders  or  chiefs 
of  their  societv."  So  it  comes  that  this  communal 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  COMMUNITY.       267 

consciousness  was  an  American  as'sertion  of  or  re 
version  to  the  absolutism  of  Europe,  perchance  of 
the  Orient.  A  little  theocratic  oligarchy  or  mon 
archy  was  witnessed  sprouting  up  sporadically  over 
our  Occidental  world  of  freedom  in  many  rural 
spots,  and  living  its  atomic  isolated  life. 

Now  the  Yankee  Transcendental  Community, 
Brook  Farm,  proposed  to  run  directly  counter  to 
this  transmitted  communistic  character.  It  was  go 
ing  to  be  democratic,  yea  individualistic,  quite  to 
the  point  of  anarchy,  for  the  first  warning  given  to 
its  people  was  against,  that  insidious  danger,  organ 
ization,  "which  begins  by  being  an  instrument  and 
ends  by  being  a  master" — and  a  master  the  Brook 
Farmers  would  not  tolerate,  even  such  an  abstract 
bloodless  boss  as  organization.  "Nor  shall  any  au 
thority  be  assumed  over  individual  freedom  of  opin 
ion  by  the  Association,  nor  by  one  member  over  an 
other.  ' '  Surely  a  new  Community  on  our  planet. 

But  herewith  mark  the  counter  stroke.  This  band 
calls  itself  an  Association,  hinting  a  form  of  asso 
ciated  man,  namely  an  Institution,  from  which  was 
the  grand  reaction.  Then  we  read  quite  an  elab 
orate  Constitution  with  a  prescribed  form  of  Gov 
ernment,  which  we  have  to  call  organized  authority 
over  some  dozens  of  people  associated.  Can  this 
be  our  free  society?  Moreover  there  is  "a  general 
Directory,  which  shall  be  chosen  annually  by  a  vote 
of  majority  of  the  members  of  the  Association. ' ' 
Verily  we  are  falling  back  into  the  thing  from 
which  we  thought  to  escape :  organized  government. 


268      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

Thus  the  very"  scheme  was  contradictory,  self -an 
nulling,  a  colossal  masterpiece  of  unconscious 
humor,  a  piece  of  irony  in  action.  It  went  its  round : 
after  the  first  four  years  it  was  declared  a  success ; 
after  a  second  four  years  it  acknowledged  itself  a 
failure  and  wound  up.  Never  numerous,  it  aver 
aged  about  seventy  with  only  four  married  pairs. 
But  it  won  a  great  name  which  has  endured  to  the 
present.  Perhaps  the  best  remembered  thing 
about  it  is  the  number  of  people  it  housed  who  after 
wards  became  distinguished.  One  masterpiece  of 
literature  it  called  forth:  Hawthorne's  Blithdale 
Romance. 

The  attitude  of  Emerson  toward  the  Brook  Farm 
was  on  the  whole  Emersonian.  Out  of  his  Concord 
Castle,  safe  from  the  economic  fiend,  he  looked  down 
and  applauded,  but  did  not  quit  his.  vantage-coign. 
So  he  writes  in  a  letter  when  the  uncertain  craft  or 
raft  put  put  to  sea :  "What  a  brave  thing  Mr.  Rip- 
ley  has  done!" — the  starter  and  chief  helmsman  of 
the.  scheme.  "He  stands  now  at  the  head  of  the 
Church  Militant,"  and  is  calling  loudly  for  help 
from  Mr.  Emerson,  the  Transcendental  High  Priest, 
who  refuses  very  appreciatively,  and  thus  writes 
himself  down.;  "At  the  name  of  a  society  all  my  re 
pulsions  play,  all  my  quills  rise  and: sharpen,"  .evi 
dently  getting  ready  to  stick  somebody,  or  to  shoot. 
One  may  hear  Emerson's  inaudible  cachination  at 
the  whole  comedy — for  it  is  against  his  principle  to 
laugh  outright: — you  ask  me,  who  am  anti-social, 
to  join  a  society,  which  while  opposed  to  all  society 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  COMMUNITY.       269 

becomes  a  society ;  you  pray  me  to  join  an  organi 
zation  which  denies  organization,  and  thus  is  self- 
damned  from  the  start.  No,  I  cannot  play  the' head- 
clown  in  that  circus. 

At  the  same  time  Mr.  Emerson  has  a  better  rea 
son,  though  "I  approve  of  every  wild  action  of  the 
experimenters."  He  knows  that  if  he  quits  his 
lofty  but  solitary  Belvedere  he  breaks  up  his  voca 
tion,  which  is  that  of  the  independent  writer.  In 
the  bustle  of  that  hustling  if  not  stormy  community 
the  grand  Hierophant  would  certainly  be  kept  busy 
with  delivering  oracles  to  the  consulting  multitudes. 
Right  he  was  to  his  Genius  and  to  the  future  when 
he  says :  "I  have  a  work  of  my  own  which  I  know 
I  can  do  with  some  success.  It  would  leave  that  un 
done  if  I  should  undertake "  this  hits  the  nail 

on  the  head.  Personal  honor  and  perchance  hon 
eyed  flattery  he  would  be  served  with  at  the  head 
of  the  table  of  Brook  Farm,  but  it  would  be  at  the 
cost  of  his  deepest  call.  During  the  present  time 
(1840)  he  must  have  been  spending  his  best  hours 
upon  his  Masterpiece  (Essays,  First  Series,  pub 
lished  in  1841) ,  and  so  he  ejaculates  in  sweetest  Em 
ersonian  accent :  No  time  for  that  side-show  now. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Brook  Farm  called  up  in 
Mr.  Emerson  a  very  real  and  serious  conflict — the 
inner  warfare  of  two  strong,  yet  opposing  convic 
tions.  For  he  was  at  this  time  completely  estranged 
from  the  entire  institutional  order  of  man,  and 
writes:  "I  have  the  habitual  feeling  that  the  whole 
of  our  social  structure— State,  School,  Religion, 


270      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

Marriage,  Trade,  Science,  has  ben  cut  off  from  its 
root  in  the  soul,"  has  become  merely  a  prescribed 
habitude  and  traditional  belief.     Hence  he  would 
like  to  restore  these  fruits  to  their  original  source, 
"to  accept  no  church,  school,  state  or  society  which 
did  not  found  itself  in  my  own  nature."  Now  Em 
erson  would  like  to  shake  off  these  inherited  fetters 
and  show  himself  a  free  man,  but  "I  allow  the  old 
circumstance  of  mother,  wife,  children,  and  brother 
to  overpower  my  wish ' ' — verily  an  old  and  entang 
ling  and  enslaving  circumstance,  just  that  ancient 
institution  called  the  Family,  in  which  he  has  got 
ten  himself  badly  embroiled  and  cannot  pull  out. 
So  he  dares  not  be  tempted  to  come  down  from  his 
impregnable  Castle  of  Defiance,  which  insures  his 
domestic  and  his  vocational  future,  despite  the  en 
chantment,  despite  even  his  conviction.    "So  I  stay 
where  I  am, ' '  he  rather  resignedly  sighs,  ' '  even  with 
the  degradation  of  owning  bankstock, "  which,  how 
ever,  has  the  power  of  putting  to  flight  the  wide- 
mouthed  Dragon  of  Hunger,  otherwise  gaping  and 
snapping  to  gulp  down  even  the  Castle  of  Defiance. 
He  openly  refuses  to  make  the  sacrifice  though  he 
hears  how  "the  Universal  Genius  apprises  me  of 
this  disgrace"  of  making  the  time's  great  refusal, 
and  "beckons  me  to  the  martyr's  and  redeemer's 
office. ' '  But  he  does  not  propose  to  be  nailed  to  that 
cross. 

Of  another  community  called  Fruitlands,  found 
ed  a  year  or  so  later  by  Mr.  Alcott  and  some  Eng 
lish  friends  in  the  town  Harvard,  not  far  from  Con- 


THE  TRANSCENDENTAL  COMMUNITY.       >2T\ 

cord,  he  had  to  decline  membership.  It  seems  that 
it  was  easier  for  him  to  refuse  this  second  invita 
tion,  though  it  brought  on  a  word-battle  with  his 
God-inspired  oracle,  Mr.  Alcott,  whom  he  deemed 
a  little  wild  in  practical,  earthly  matters.  So  Em 
erson  could  not  be  induced  to  quit  his  Fortress  of 
Freedom,  with  its  domesticities.  Still  his  conscience 
was  ill  at  ease,  he  felt  that  he  was  sacrificing  convic 
tion  to  convenience.  He  proposed  a  kind  of  com 
promise  :  he  would  take  dreamful,  impecunious  Mr. 
Alcott  and  family  under  his  own  roof,  and  we  hear 
his  belief  that  Alcott  "  is  a  man  who  should  be  main 
tained  at  public  cost."  But  how  about  the  two 
wives,  the  real  sovereigns  in  one  household?  Mrs. 
Emerson  consented  though  seemingly  with  reluc 
tance;  but  Mrs.  Alcott  set  her  foot  down  squarely 
against  the  scheme  of  two  queens  in  one  little  realm 
of  authority.  Still  Emerson  had  to  make  some 
peace-offering  to  his  violated  conviction.  So  he  re 
solved  to  begin  at  home,  and  to  establish  social  re 
form  at  his  own  dinner-table.  Accordingly  he  in 
vited  his  two  serving-women  to  eat  at  the  same 
table  with  the  family.  "But  Lydia  the  cook  firmly 
refused, ' '  saying  that  was  not  her  place.  Thus  Em 
erson  tosses  somewhat  restlessly  in  his  <Castle  of  De 
fiance  :  he  feels  that  he  is  living  in  deep  contradic 
tion  with  his  doctrine;  the  Transcendental  Com 
munity  has  challenged  him  and  he  dares  not  accept 
the  challenge,  but  skulks  to  the  rear  of  his  owi}  bat 
tle-line. 


272      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  SECOND. 

Section  C.    Origination 

In  the  case  of  Emerson  perhaps  more  than  in 
that  of  any  other  great  writer  do  we  need  to  reach 
back  to  the  first  beginnings  of  his  literary  compo 
sition,  so  that  we  may  trace  the  words  of  his  spirit's 
evolution.  Fortunately  sufficient  material  has  been 
printed  to  give  some  outline  of  the  embryonic 
shapes  of  his  writing,  though  such  material  may  be 
expected  to  increase  in  the  future.  No  author  is  so 
atomic  even  in  his  finished  work — a  trait  which  is 
deeply  consonant  with  his  doctrine  as  well  as  with 
his  mental  character.  His  stress  is  upon  the  indi 
vidual  even  in  the  structure  of  sentence  and  para 
graph. 

Hence  we  shall  here  take  note  of  a  third  line  of 
Emersonian  activity,  running  parallel  with  the  two 
lines  already  set  forth,  namely,  his  Productivity  and 
his  Propagation.  This  third  line  moves  through 
his  whole  Creative  Decennium  (1835-1845)  and 
shows  its  elemental  substrate,  its  protoplasmic 
forms  at  their  first  birth'  leaping  from  the  author 's 
brain.  Here  then  we  are  to  assist  at  the  actual  par 
turition  of  Transcendentalism,  and. see  its  primal 
or  infantile  shapes,  at  their  earliest  efflux  from 
their  divine  fountain.  "We  must  recollect  that  it 
was  just  this  efflux  upon  which  Emerson  puts  such 
oft-repeated  emphasis,  as  the  very  genesis  and 
birth-point  of  his  Transcendental  world-view. 
Hence  the  importance  of  the  present  series  of  writ 
ings  for  the  comprehension  of  the  man  and  his 
work. 


ORIGINATION.  L>7;; 

But  the  name  of  this  strand  of  his  Creative  De- 
cennium — that  has  given  us  some  trouble,  not  yet 
altogether  relieved.  If  it  would  help,  we  might  coin 
a  term  and  call  our  author  in  this  phasis  of  his 
creative  power  the  protomorphic  Emerson,  produc 
ing  the  first  forms  of  his  mentality  and  of  his  writ, 
which  forms  are  to  evolve  and  coalesce  into  his  fin 
ished  works.  But  as  we  are  here  dealing  specially 
with  the  original  and  originative  source  of  the 
man's  greatness,  we  may  name  the  present  subject 
Origination,  dwelling  upon  the  embryonic,  the 
atomic,  the  elementary  in  his  life's  achievement — 
verily  the  embryology  of  the  writer  Emerson. 

Thus  we  pass  from  his  practical  outer  activity  of 
Propagation  to  his  inner  self-communion  and  first 
conception,  such  as  we  see  in  the  most  intimate  form 
throughout  his  Diary.  It  is  a  return  to  Productiv 
ity,  not  now  in  its  rounded  and  finished  shape,  as 
we  have  already  noted  in  the  Essays  and  Ad 
dresses,  but  in  its  primitive  germination — the  bud 
ding  of  the  Emersonian  tree  of  knowledge.  It  is  cre 
ation,  not  the  formful,  but  the  unformed,  or  rather 
the  pre-formed  as  yet;  hence  this  stage  is  a  very 
suggestive  portion  of  the  present  Creative  Decen- 
nium.  In  some  respects  it  is  the  truly  Emersonian 
part  of  all  Emerson,  showing  his  genius  in  its  most 
immediate,  directly  inspired  outbreaks.  Often 
crude,  disconnected,  capricious,  the  present  stage 
of  primal  Origination  may  well  be  deemed  the  sub 
structure  of  the  Emersonian  temple. 

What  shall  we  include  in  this  department  of  his 


274      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

work?  Without  setting  up  too  definite  limits  we 
shall  take  into  it  three  leading  kinds  of  his  writ 
ing. 

First,  we  shall  class  here  his  Journals  or  Diary, 
printed  a  few  years  ago  in  ten  good  volumes.  The 
most  rudimentary  utterance  of  his  brain-work,  yet 
often  the  freshest;  we  put  it  at  the  base  of  his 
building. 

Second,  we  arrange  here  the  Letters  of  Emerson 
which  have  their  special  value  in  his  biography  and 
also  in  a  literary  estimate.  Much  of  his  corre 
spondence  still  lies  unprinted,  possibly  some  fu 
ture  Emerson  Society  will  take  up  its  publication. 

Third,  we  embrace  in  this  section  the  poems  of 
Emerson,  which  taken  separately,  are  lyrical  jets 
often  of  beauty  and  power,  but  taken  together,  are 
fragments  of  one  great  poetic  structure  never  com 
pleted,  perhaps  never  fully  conceived,  but  certainly 
aspired  for  and  wrought  at  in  this  creative  part  of 
his  life.  There  will  doubtless  be  some  question  about 
such  a  co-ordination  of  Emerson's  verse ;  but  it  also 
has  its  spontaneous  embryonic  phase,  like  the  prose 
Journals;  then,  too,  it  reaches  its  height  of  com 
pleteness  in  certain  lyrics.  Still  as  a  whole  it  is 
diarial,  a  succession  of  separate  moods  and  thoughts 
running  through  the  days  of  his  life — unconcen- 
trated  anywhere  into  one  great  organic  work. 

Such  are  the  three  main  groups,  as  we  conceive, 
of  Emeijson's  germinal,  atomic  writ,  as  -distinct 
from  his  more  finished  compositions.  This  part  of 
his  work  has  its  peculiar  interest  and  importance 


ORIGINATION.  075 

in  his  psychical  biography;  he  was  the  man  of  im 
mediate  intuition  and  inspiration,  not  so  much  of 
mediate  reflection  and  organization.  He  disliked 
all  system,  he  had  indeed  no  deep  sense  of  its  sig 
nificance  in  the  mind  or  in  the  world.  The  mo 
ment's  suggestion  was  the  divine  thing,  or  most 
likely  to  be  such ;  hence  its  word  was  what  was  to  be 
written  down  on  the  spot  as  the  God's  own  oracle. 

So  it  comes  that  these  three  kinds  of  Emersonian 
authorship— the  Journal,  the  Letter,  and  the  Poem 
— have  the  common  characteristic :  they  are  diarial, 
being  a  record  of  the  successive  upbursts  of  Emer 
son's  inner  life-experience.  As  such  they  are  ulti 
mately  to  be  read  and  construed,  becoming  thereby 
an  essential  constituent  of  his  biography.  Indeed 
all  of  his  works  are  directly  or  indirectly  biograph 
ical;  they  form  a  kind  of  universal  Diary  of  the 
Great  Man,  of  which  his  Journals  are  the  most  im 
mediate  and  spontaneous  overflow. 

It  seems  to  us  that  Emerson  had  a  presentiment 
of  the  significance  of  this  somewhat  submerged  or 
subliminal  part  of  his  labors.  Very  little  of  it  came 
to  light  during  his  life-time ;  still  he  carefully  pre 
served  the  manuscripts  of  it  in  the  Emerson  Arch 
ives,  of  which  there  must  be  still  a  good  deal  remain 
ing  unpublished.  Not  till  this  be  accessible,  can  a 
full  biography  of  Emerson  be  written.  Thought- 
worthy  at  this  point  is  it  to  see  Emerson  (like  Goe 
the)  as  the  sedulous  archivist  of  Emersoniana,  so 
that  he  still,  long  after  death,  keeps  publishing 
books. 


276      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

I. 

EMERSON'S  JOURNALS 

All  Transcendentalists  should  be  diligent  diar 
ists,  if  they  would  keep  the  faith;  for  their  profes 
sion  is  that  of  God's  reporters,  ever  alert  to  pick 
up  an  item  from  the  supernal  downflow  into  the  hu 
man  soul.  Thoreau  kept  a  daily  record  which  has 
been  published,  and  reveals  the  man  more  inti 
mately  than  his  regular  books.  Alcott  is  reported 
to  have  left  the  hugest  Diary  of  all,  overflowing  into 
many  volumes,  from  which  only  a  few  extracts  have 
yet  been  printed.  Possibly  its  turn  will  come.  To 
be  sure,  many  other  people  besides  Transcendental- 
its  have  kept  Journals.  Nearly  every  person  who 
likes  to  write  and  has  needed  self-expression  has 
had  his  diarial  period  in  life,  especially  in  youth, 
when  the  moment's  grand  effluence  into  writ 
through  the  pen-point  seems  quite  intoxicating,  if 
not  miraculous.  In  this  regard  Transcendentalism 
was  a  kind  of  life-long  adolescence,  which  kept 
gushing  from  above  down  into  a  human  Diary. 
And  that  has  turned  out  one  of  the  best  and  most 
lasting  qualities,  for  which  we  at  least  are  thank 
ful,  since  it  adds  a  fresh  chapter  to  the  value  and 
meaning  of  psychical  Biography. 

"When  it  was  resolved  to  celebrate  the  centennial 
of  Emerson  by  a  new  edition  of  his  works,  there 
rose  a  natural  inquiry  about  his  unpublished  Jour 
nals,  some  notion  of  which  had  already  reached 


EMERSON' 8  JOURNALS.  277 

the  public.  The  importance  of  Emerson  had  con 
tinued  to  loom  larger  in  universal  literature  since 
his  death,  and  the  outlook  indicated  a  still  greater 
rise  in  his  significance.  Accordingly  between  the 
years  1909  and  1914,  ten  volumes  of  the  book  called 
Emerson's  Journals  were  made  accessible  to  the 
students  of  Emerson,  who  had  been  longing  for 
some  such  fresh  apparition  of  the  master  in  print. 
These  Journals  extend  through  fifty-two  years  of 
the  author's  life,  from  1820  to  1872,  from  adoles 
cence  till  old-age,  and  thus  form  a  kind  of  proto 
plasmic  substrate  to  his  whole  career.  It  should  be 
added  these  Journals  have  been  edited  and  expur 
gated  under  certain  scruples;  they  are  "not  the 
whole  but  selections ' '  as  the  editor  tells  us,  even  if 
"the  greater  part  of  the  contents"  has  been  in 
cluded  in  the  present  edition.  Still  too  much  sen 
sitiveness  about  Boston  and  its  old  patriciate ;  after 
another  fifty  or  hundred  years,  the  world  may  hope 
for  an  uncensored  Emerson,  who,  purest  of  classics, 
still  needs  some  purification  for  Yankeeland. 

On  inspection  of  the  ten  volumes  we  find  that  the 
record  of  the  Creative  Decennium,  which  we  are  at 
present  specially  considering,  may  be  deemed  the 
culmination  both  as  to  quantity  and  quality.  For 
instance,  the  years  1834-5  to  1844-5  have  practically 
four  volumes  out  of  the  ten,  though  it  embraces  not 
one-fifth  of  the  time  of  the  whole  Diary.  This  is 
only  another  example  of  the  enormous  productive 
energy  of  Emerson  during  this  his  distinctively 


278      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

genetic  Epoch.  He  seems  the  mighty  demiurge  of 
creation  on  all  sides.  Whatever  he  takes  hold  of, 
there  is  something  gigantic  in  the  outcome,  And 
this  is  true  not  only  as  regards  amount,  the  excel 
lence  is  of  a  higher  order.  Unless  I  deceive  myself, 
this  decennial  Diary  is  the  best  of  the  whole — most 
interesting,  most  original,  most  deeply  biographic 
and  poetic.  It  corresponds  with  his  present  crea 
tivity,  and  reflects  in  hundreds  of  little  facets  his 
dawning  world-view,  which  have  all  the  freshness 
of  first  discovery. 

Here,  then,  lies  the  embryology  of  Emerson's 
Genius  more  distinctively,  more  primordially  man 
ifested  than  anywhere  else,  than  even  in  the  rest  of 
his  Journals,  which  have  records  before  this  Epoch 
as  well  as  after  it.  That  is,  we  behold  here  his  dia- 
rial  mountain-top,  to  which  there  is  quite  a  long 
ascent  (say  the  first  three  volumes)  and  then  quite 
a  long  descent  toward  the  close  (say  the  last  three 
volumes).  Still  the  entire  work  is  essentially  the 
extemporaneous  Emerson  welling  up  (or  perchance 
down)  into  his  first  gushes  of  inspiration,  the  prime 
intimate  revelation  of  the  sovereign  efflux  to  him 
self.  From  this  point  of  view  the  Journals  make  the 
most  transcendental  part  of  Transcendentalism,  giv 
ing  not  only  the  doctrine  or  content,  but  the  very 
form  and  personal  experience  of  it  at  first  hand  in 
the  soul.  Among  the  Emersonian  apostolate  one 
may  look  for  a  special  study  and  perchance  cult  of 
this  last  book  of  the  Emersonian  Bible— indeed  it  .is 


EMERSON'S  JOURNALS. 


279 


in  its  way  a  Book  of  Revelations.  And  whatever 
one  may  think  of  its  divine  acclaim,  it  is  a  very 
human,  soul-illustrating  document,  deeply  sugges 
tive  in  its  psychical  import. 

But  to  return  to  the  mentioned  decennial  portion 
of  the  Diary.  We  are  to  note  that  it  is  not  all  alike, 
it  too  has  its  differences  of  mood,  of  doctrine,  yea  of 
evolution.  "We  may  observe  separate  stages  in  these 
ten  years  of  diarial  records.  During  this  Epoch 
Emerson  had  his  most  intense,  most  varied,  his 
truly  Titanic  experiences.  In  the  loss  of  his  boy 
Waldo  the  discipline  of  death  struck  him  a  more 
poignant  blow  than  he  had  ever  before  experienced, 
more  than  even  in  the  passing  of  his  dearly  loved 
wife  and  brothers.  That  child  he  deemed  the  heir 
of  his  Genius  and  greater — the  very  proof  and  pres 
ence  of  the  divine  descent  into  human  being.  Thus 
young  Waldo  may  be  called  his  father's  transcen 
dental  son  and  gave  to  the  latter  a  living  evidence 
of  the  truth  of  his  doctrine  before  his  eyes.  More 
over  in  this  crushing  stroke  Emerson  again  was 
made  to  feel  the  transitoriness  of  personality,  which 
deep  experience  wrote  itself  into  his  conviction, 
whence  it  passed  to  his  outer  writing.  Another  pos 
sible  influence  of  this  evanishment  may  be  noted: 
Emerson  began  to  feel  more  acutely  the  decline  of 
Transcendentalism  itself  with  the  passing  of  his 
promising  child  in  January,  1842.  We  recollect 
that  in  this  same  month  he  gave  a  lecture  called  the 
Transcendentalist  which  shows  more  than  one  in 
dication  of  the  eclipse  of  his  doctrine.  We  may 


280      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  SECOND. 

read  also  in  the  Diary  of  this  time  the  tokens  of  a 
great  hope  shattered,  which  throws  its  shadow  upon 
his  speech  and  belief,  even  upon  futurity. 

Accordingly  in  these  four  diarial  volumes  of  the 
present  decennial  Epoch  we  may  trace  a  movement 
like  that  which  we  have  already  noted  in  his  other 
writings  of  this  time :  a  rise,  a  culmination,  and  a 
decline,  especially  as  regards  his  doctrine  of  Tran 
scendentalism.  He  shows  himself  critical  of  it,  es 
pecially  of  its  promulgators  whose  extravagances 
he  satirizes  with  vigor  and  sometimes  with  venom. 
These  private  records  also  indicate  his  first  stage  of 
apostolic  zeal  and  combat  for  the  new  idea ;  then  lie 
feels  its  crisis  in  himself,  with  many  a  little  note  of 
disillusion  about  reform  and  the  reformers.  The 
outcome  of  this  Epoch  was  a  profound  contradiction 
and  discord  in  his  soul,  to  which  he  often  gives 
brief  sighs  of  utterance  in  his  Journals.  Sometimes 
he  called  it  the  inherent  dualism  between  the  Theo 
retical  and  the  Practical ;  he  could  not  harmonize 
his  inner  conviction  with  his  outer  conduct.  He  de 
clares  :  "I  approve  every  wild  action  of  the  experi 
menters  ; ' '  still  he  refused  to  follow  them  and  even 
assailed  them.  Note  this:  "I  say  what  they  say 
concerning  celibacy,  or  money,  or  community  of 
goods;"  he  did  not  believe  in  the  family,  or  eco 
nomic  society,  or  property ;  but  he  never  proposed 
to  carry  out  his  belief  in  the  deed.  "What  excuse  ? 
"My  only  apology  for  not  doing  their  work  is  pre 
occupation  of  mind. ' '  That  is :  I  have  other  fish 
to  fry  besides  obeying  my  principles.  Emerson  also 


EMERSON'S  JOURNALS.  281 

names  this  dualism  as  the  conflict  between  Belief 
and  Unbelief:  "the  believer  is  poet,  saint,  idealist," 
the  foe  of  tradition ;  "the  unbeliever  supports  the 
church,  education,"  and  institutions  generally,  is 
the  friend  of  tradition.  But  which  of  the  two  is 
Emerson?  Hear  him  define  himself:  "I  am  nom 
inally  a  believer ;  yet  I  hold  on  to  property,  and  eat 
my  bread  with  unbelief. ' '  To  such  deepest  discord 
has  Emerson  come  seemingly  through  the  inner  evo 
lution  of  his  Transcendentalism.  (See  the  confes 
sion  in  Journals,  Vol.  V,  p.  482.  The  same  note  of 
unhappy  inner  struggle  is  heard  in  many  another 
jotting  of  this  time,  1843-5.) 

What  is  he  to  do  with  himself?  Emerson  was 
famous  for  his  outer  calm  on  his  quiet  impassive 
Sphinx-like  face,  as  well  as  for  his  reposeful  speech 
even  in  describing  his  own  unrepose.  His  words 
remain  in  equilibrium,  though  he  has  on  hand  quite 
the  mightiest  seesaw  of  the  human  soul :  that  of  con 
science,  which  was  in  his  case  the  direct  command 
of  deity,  against  the  whole  institutional  world. 
Which  is  he  to  obey  ?  Here  is  one  of  his  statements : 
"My  Genius  (individual)  loudly  calls  me  to  stay 
where  I  am,  even  with  the  degradation  of  owning 
bank  stock  and  seeing  poor  men  suffer" — bids  me 
dwell  in  and  uphold  the  established  order.  On  the 
other  hand,  "the  Universal  Genius  (here  Con 
science)  apprises  me  of  this  disgrace  and  beckons 
me  to  the  martyr's  and  redeemer's  office. "  Thus 
he  lets  conscience  slide,  here  sr  me  what  disguised 
under  the  name  of  Uni versa1  Genius.  But  what  is 


282      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

to  become  of  all  those  homilies  on  the  worth  and 
supremacy  of  the  Moral  Sentiment,  in  which  Emer 
son  particularly  revels?  And  where  is  now  our 
New  England  sovereign,  the  boasted  Puritanic  con 
science?  Seemingly  eclipsed,  if  not  dethroned  for 
the  nonce ;  still  Emerson  has  some  hope  of  his  lost 
selfhood,  and  whispers  for  his  own  edification: 
"Obedience  to  a  man's  Genius  is  the  particular  of 
Faith, ' '  which  is  his  case  just  in  the  present  crisis ; 
but  "by  and  by  I  shall  come  to  the  universal  of 
Faith"  (Journals  V.  p.  483) .  Did  he  ever? 

Thus  Emerson  does  not  despair  of  some  future 
reconciliation  of  the  present  furious  scission  in  his 
soul  between  his  conviction  and  his  conduct,  or  be 
tween  his  Theory  and  his  Practice.  And  let  it  here 
be  said  that  this  presentiment  or  prophecy  concern 
ing  himself  will  turn  out  tru-e,  but  not  till  after 
many  years  when  he  has  passed  through  the  fiery 
furnace  of  the  Civil  War.  Two  decades  must 
elapse  with  many  intense,  savage  experiences  ere  he 
becomes  reconciled  with  that  world  of  institutions, 
especially  with  the  highest,  the  State,  which  now 
strike  such  a  blasting  dissonance  both  into  his 
thought  and  into  his  life.  Of  this  later  change  we 
shall  take  note  in  its  place. 

Still  this  present  dualism  belongs  not  only  to  Em 
erson,  but  to  his  time  and  country.  The  contradic 
tion  between  the  established  order  and  the  individ 
ual's  sense  of  right  was  getting  acute  in  a  number 
of  directions,  and  was  really  driving  forward  to  a 
violent  rupture.  Especially  over  the  political  field 


EMERSON'S  JOURNALS.  283 

Concience  and  the  Constitution  were  having  a  death 
grapple  in  many  earnest  spirits;  the  expression  of 
this  conflict  as  the  battle  between  the  two  Laws,  be 
tween  the  Higher  Law  and  the  Enacted  Law,  or  be 
tween  God's  command  and  Man's  ordinance  was 
heard  everywhere  as  the  utterance  of  the  deepest 
scission  in  the  folk-soul  of  the  time.  Beneath  this 
same  spiritual  collision  Emerson  was  writhing  at 
the  present  conjuncture,  whereof  he  gives  many  a 
glimpse  in  his  Journals. 

Such  is  perhaps  the  profoundest  note  in  these 
records,  but  they  tell  of  many  other  things  of  vary 
ing  import.  Still  it  is  of  interest  to  watch  these 
manifold  stimulations  or  titillations  of  his  under- 
self,  as  they  bubble  up  from  within  through  moods, 
caprices,  intimations  —  or  from  without  through 
events,  experiences,  talks  with  a  very  promiscuous 
lot  of  people.  He  is  at  best  a  kind  of  reporter  to 
the  Oversoul,  gathering  items  for  his  spirit's  news 
paper.  Thus  he  is  here  primarily  a  journalist,  and 
his  work  is  rightly  named  a  Journal.  Verily  such 
momentary  jets  of  his  individuality  are  not  all  of 
them  momentous,  hence  he  will  in  time  make  a  selec 
tion.  The  richest  spears  of  grain  he  takes  and  binds 
into  a  sheaf  or  paragraph,  and  then  stacks  these 
sheaves  together  into  the  Essay.  Still  in  this  last 
shape  we  can  pick  out  the  original  wheat-stalk 
which  first  gushed  up  singly  from  the  mother-soil. 

Moreover  this  Diary  shows  Emerson's  inborn  de 
light  in  writing,  his  absolute  need  of  self-expression. 
He  is  his  own  best  listener:  he  has  received  his  re- 


284      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

ward,  though  not  a  soul  ever  hears  what  he  has 
said.  Keally  this  is  the  primary  test  of  the  writer, 
whereby  he  finds  out  whether  he  is  truly  so  called. 
Emerson  declares  that  he  would  get  sick  unless  he 
could  create,  of  course  through  his  pen-point.  Then 
also  he  would  be  disobedient  to  the  God  who  was  the 
direct  source  of  his  creativity,  according  to  his 
doctrine.  Such  was  surely  the  Transcendental  in 
junction. 

In  these  Journals  we  may  trace  his  life-long  aspi 
ration  to  finish  what  to  him  was  the  unfinishable. 
"I  endeavor  to  announce  the  laws  of  the  First  Phi 
losophy"  (III,  489).  Such  is  one  of  many  little 
pulsations  of  hope  which  throb  his  great  ambition. 
But  he  never  could  quite  realize  that  work  of  his 
Life-Essay,  though  he  kept  chipping  at  it  to  the 
last.  And  the  many  turns  of  his  poetic  longing  we 
may  follow  with  touches  of  interest  and  perchance 
of  sympathy.  One  of  the  deepest  and  strongest 
heart-beats  of  Emerson,  heard  all  through  this 
Diary  was  for  unity,  organization.  Looking  back 
ward  long  after  the  present  Decennium  he  cries  out 
almost  in  anguish:  "I  am  tired  of  scraps.  I  do 
not  wish  to  be  a  literary  or  intellectual  chiffonier. ' ' 
Mark  this  violent  wish  in  the  same  passage :  "Away 
with  this  Jew's  rag-bag  of  ends  and  tufts  of  bro 
cade,  velvet  and  cloth-of-gold ;  let  me  spin  a  cord  to 
bind  wholesome  and  belonging  facts"  (VIII,  463, 
in  May,  1854) .  We  may  well  hear  in  this  passion 
ate  eruption  a  note  of  retrospect  and  self-dissatis- 


EMERSON'S  JOURNALS.  285 

faction.  And  he  ends  his  review  with  a  prayer  often 
uttered  before : 

The  Asmodean  feat  be  mine 

To  spin  my  sand-heaps  into  twine. 

But  the  most  pervasive  drive  of  the  Emersonian 
spirit  in  this  record  of  self-communion  is  the  re 
ligious.  The  problem  is :  How  shall  I  win  my  true 
relation  to  God  ?  That  is  the  positive  aim ;  but  with 
it  is  connected  a  bitter  and  long-continued  negative 
critique,  which  has  to  shear  away  the  many  intri 
cate  theological  entanglements.  Daringly  he  sets 
about  the  task;  not  through  Socrates,  St.  Paul, 
Plato,  or  even  Christ,  not  through  any  departed 
wisdom  and  virtue,  are  you  to  find  deity,  but 
through  yourself  immediately;  you  are  the  one  to 
deal  directly  with  "the  Inconceivable  Intellect, 
which  kindles  all  and  overwhelms  all."  Thus  Em 
erson  will  in  person  "walk  with  God"  in  his  prom 
enades  through  his  wood-lot  and  around  Walden. 
Here  is  Emerson's  germinal  doctrine,  reaching 
quite  back  to  adolescent  experience  of  religion — the 
early  hint  of  his  "World-view  and  of  his  God-view, 
which  will  remain  imbedded  in  his  very  being,  to 
fructify  his  life  and  writ,  as  well  as  to  pass  through 
various  grades  of  evolution. 

Nor  must  we  quit  this  topic  without  noting  the 
many  glimpses  of  the  underlying  Psychology  which 
is  to  transcend  and  yet  reconstruct  both  the  old 
Metaphysics  and  the  old  Theology  in  a  new  uni- 


286      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

versal  ...science,  or  science  of  all  sciences.  This  is 
properly  Emerson 's  much-bedreamt  -  Philosophic 
Prima,  which  he  hopes  still  to  realize. 

II. 

EMERSON'S  CORRESPONDENCE 

Another  important  strand  of  Emersonian  Litera 
ture  is  his  epistolary  product.  A  good  deal  of  this 
has  not  yet  been  published,  but  the  future  will 
probably  see  more  of  it  brought  to  light.  As  the 
size  of  the  man  grows  with  time  and  the  significance 
of  his  environment  increases,  there  will  be  a  call  for 
every  shred  of  his  writing.  Herein  again  his  case 
suggests  that  of  Goethe,  whose  extant  letters  have 
been  estimated  at  10,000,  a  stream  of  which  has  been 
pouring  into  print  ever  since  the  poet's  death  (see 
especially  the  Goethe  Jahrbuch,  which  easily  sug 
gests  the  idea  of  an  Emerson  Yearbook  or  Annual, 
whose  chief  object  would  be  to  collect  all  these  stray 
items  of  the  man  and  his  time). 

Emerson's  letters  are  necessarily  more  reserved 
and  often  more  studied  than  his  Diary;  still  they 
are  to  be  placed  among  his  more  elemental  and  ex 
temporaneous  writings.  They  belong  mainly  to  the 
occasion,  and  follow  the  moment,  hence  they  reveal 
more  or  less  distinctly  the  author's  stages  of  evolu 
tion,  as  well  as  give  glimpses  of  the  age.  So  it  comes 
that  his  Correspondence  takes  a  diarial  character, 
and  must  be  classed  alongside  of  his  Journals  by 
virtue  of  both  style  and  contents.  I  imagine  that 


EMERSON'S  CORRESPONDENCE.  ogy 

Emerson  enjoyed  his  Letter-writing,  quite  as  much 
as  his  Diary;  indeed  they  are  closely  akin,  and 
easily  pass  into  each  other.  We  find  him  sometimes 
transferring  a  letter  bodily  to  his  Journal ;  but  the 
reverse  probably  took  place  oftener.  A  letter  natur 
ally  permits  or  even  calls  for  a  more  purposed  and 
organized  form  than  the  moment's  jotting.  Still 
it  lies  near  the  primary  and  original  sources  of  Em 
erson  's  writ ;  so  we  place  it  here  under  the  head  of 
Origination. 

One  work  of  the  author's  epistolary  activity 
stands  out  in  supreme  value  and  distinction :  this  is 
his  Correspondence  with  Carlyle,  which  alone  we 
shall  consider  in  the  present  connection.  It  has 
been  long  before  the  public  and  was  published 
shortly  after  Emerson's  death.  It  has  also  the 
merit  of  being  a  kind  of  parallel  biography  or  rather 
autobiography  of  two  men  of  genius  in  their  reac 
tion  on  one  another  and  on  the  time.  Thus  it  is  a 
work  unique  of  its  kind  in  literature.  It  is  much 
more  vital,  more  original  and  far-reaching  than 
any  of  old  Plutarch's  rather  external  parallels.  It 
is  self-unfolding  and  self -written,  yea  self -parallel 
ing,  and  evolves  through  the  active  life  of  each  of 
the  mutually  attracting  and  repelling  personalities. 
The  Correspondence  between  Goethe  and  Schiller 
has  been  likened  to  it,  and  undoubtedly  has  resem 
blances;  but  the  spirit  as  well  as  the  scope  of  the 
two  works  are  very  different,  and  highly  character 
istic  of  their  respective  authors  and  nations. 

The  first  letter  comes  from  Emerson  and  is  dated 


288      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

May,  1834 ;  the  last  one  is  Carlyle  's  with  the  date  of 
April,  1872.  Thus  the  Correspondence  lasted  some 
thirty-eight  years,  from  ripe  manhood  in  both  cases 
till  old-age.  Which  of  the  two  is  the  better  man  ? 
In  worth  of  character  Emerson  is  certainly  the  su 
perior;  in  literary  power  Carlyle  takes  the  prize; 
in  permanent  influence,  Emerson ;  in  immediate  ef 
fect,  Carlyle. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  Correspondence  be 
gins  just  about  with  that  most  important  Epoch  of 
Emerson's  life  which  we  have  called  his  Creative 
Decennium  (1834-5).  He  has  taken  lodgment  at 
Concord  in  his  Castle  of  Defiance  to  which  he  is 
soon  to  bring  a  wife.  This  date  tells  also  the  time 
of  a  very  significant  change  in  Carlyle 's  career:  he 
has  left  his  isolated  hermitage  of  Scotch  Craigen- 
puttock,  and  has  betaken  himself  to  the  most  popu 
lous  center  on  the  globe:  the  city  of  London,  of 
which  huge  wen  (as  he  calls  it)  he  is  henceforth  to 
be  a  sprightly  corpuscle.  Thus  in  the  same  year 
about,  and  at  the  turn  of  a  pivotal  Epoch  in  both 
their  lives,  they  take  a  local  sweep  (which  is  also 
spiritual)  in  opposite  directions.  It  may  be  said 
that  Carlyle  quits  his  Castle  of  Defiance  in  the  coun 
try,  where  he  lived  and  wrote  some  six  or  seven 
years,  and  directs  his  flight  to  the  city,  ' '  for  bread 
and  work,"  he  says.  But  Emerson  moves  the  other 
way,  from  city  to  country,  where  he  will  remain  and 
do  his  task  in  freedom,  for  by  an  almost  miraculous 
intervention  he  finds  his  bread  already  given  him  in 
advance  for  his  whole  life. 


EMERSON'S  CORRESPONDENCE.  *>89 

First  is  to  be  observed  that  altogether  the  larg 
est,  and  to  our  mind  the  best  and  most  zestful  por 
tion  of  this  Correspondence  is  found  in  the  present 
Creative  Decennium.  Of  the  two  equal  volumes  con 
taining  these  letters,  the  first  embraces  about  eight 
years  of  this  Epoch,  the  second  stretches  through 
thirty  years.  A  significant  difference  in  quantity  is 
this,  and  there  is  also  a  difference  in  quality  though 
by  no  means  proportionate.  A  similar  distinction 
we  noticed  in  Emerson's  Journals,  whose  bloom  of 
excellence  and  productivity  takes  place  in  the  pres 
ent  Decennium.  The  two  men  were  now  at  the 
height  of  their  powers  together,  though  Carlyle  was 
toward  seven  years  older  than  Emerson,  who  ma 
tured  at  an  earlier  age  than  his  friend,  and  declined 
sooner.  Thus  we  may  watch,  in  this  Correspon 
dence  the  two  geniuses  at  their  best  in  the  best  time 
of  life.  Significant  is  it  that  both  of  them  write 
and  publish  their  respective  masterpieces  not  very 
far  apart  during  this  prolific  Decennium ;  Carlyle 's 
French  Revohition  was  completed  in  1837,  while 
Emerson's  Essays,  First  Series  appeared  in  1841, 
though  mostly  written  several  years  before,  since  it 
was  edited  in  the  main  from  his  Journals  and  his 
Lectures. 

And  now  upon  what  fact,  statement,  passage  in 
these  Letters  can  we  put  our  finger,  and  say :  That 
is  the  most  important  item  in  this  book,  yea  the 
very  turning-point  and  determining  event  of  these 
two  mighty  lives?  We  shall  cite  it,  for  it  has  re 
mained  vividly  stamped  upon  our  memory,  since 


290      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

we  read  it  more  than  a  generation  ago  when  this 
Correspondence  first  appeared  in  print  (1883,  we 
believe).  Emerson  is  writing  to  Carlyle,  who  is  in 
a  furious  struggle  with  poverty,  from  whose  last 
pinch  he  has  already  been  rescued  by  his  Ameri 
can  friend.  The  latter  offers  to  share  hearth  and 
heart  with  him  under  the  following  inducement? : 
"My  house  is  a  very  good  one  for  comfort  ar.d 
abounding  in  room.  Besides  my  house,  I  have  22,- 
000  dollars  whose  income  in  ordinary  years  is  six 
per  cent."  This  was  the  divinely  sent  inheritance 
through  his  first  wife — no  wonder  that  Emerson 
believed  in  that  incalculable  efflux  from  above — 
is  not  here  the  actual  visible  proof  of  it,  truly  life- 
encompassing  1  To  this  mass  of  Heaven-dropped 
manna  is  to  be  added  the  product  of  personal  activ 
ity,  "the  income  of  my  winter  lectures,  which  was 
last  winter  800  dollars."  All  this  in  a  little  coun 
try-town  before  the  Civil  War;  well  may  he  ex 
claim:  ""With  this  income  here  at  home  I  am  a 
rich  man.  I  stay  at  home  and  go  abroad  at  my  own 
instance."  Thus  Emerson  celebrates  his  freedom 
with  no  little  triumph,  if  we  catch  his  mood;  eco 
nomic  freedom  it  is,  the  primal  basis  of  all  other 
freedoms,  especially  of  literary  freedom.  Surely 
here  is  abundance  for  the  two  families  not  large ; 
so  Emerson  shouts  across  the  ocean  to  his  hunger- 
dreading  comrade :  Come  over  hither,  eat  your  fill 
and  ban  that  infernal  spectre  of  your  stomach; 
then  mount  with  me  to  the  topmost  of  my  Castle  of 
Defiance,  and  without  any  fear  of  the  three  first 


EMER8O  \'$  CO  If  K  KSIPO  ND  KNCE.  291 

Pates— food,   raiment,   shelter— we  can    .do    battle 
with  the  hosts  of  darkness. 

Carlyle  did  not  see  his  way  to  accept  the  gener 
ous  invitation— which  was  doubtless  in  his  case  a 
wise  conclusion.  Still  Emerson  continued  his  finan 
cial  favors,  looked  after  the  publication  of  Car 
lyle 's  books  in  America,  and  gave  himself  untold 
trouble  in  soliciting  readers.  Carlyle 's  first  pay 
and  first  appreciation  must  be  credited  to  Emerson 
backed  by  his  Transcendental  disciples,  who  found 
in  Carlyle  much  aliment  for  their  faith  and  per 
chance  the  first  source  of  their  movement,  especially 
in  Sartor.  One  gets  decidedly  the  impression  from 
these  letters  that  Carlyle  would  have  been  lost  to 
Literature  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  timely  and  per 
sistent  aid  of  Emerson.  No  other  rescue  seems  any 
where  in  sight,  And  Emerson  could  not  have  lent 
this  help,  unless  he  had  been  economically  indepen 
dent,  and  al)le  to  fling  his  challenge  to  any  fortune. 
This  bonanza  of  22,000  dollars  dropping  into  Em 
erson's  lap  may  well  be  deemed  the  most  profitable 
investment  of  money  ever  made  in  America ;  no 
mine,  bank,  railroad  ever  produced  any  such  return, 
for  its  six  per  cent  rendered  possible  the  careers  of 
both  Emerson  and  Carlyle,  as  far  as  foresight  in 
vouchsafed  to  us  in  such  matters. 

In  the  same  letter  (Emerson  to  Carlyle,  number 
XXIII)  is  a  passage  which  we  shall  insert  here, 
since  Emerson  indicates  by  it  rather  more  distinctly 
than  anywhere  else  in  our  recollection,  the  spiritual 
relation  of  his  wife  to  himself  and  to  his  doctrinal 


292      KALPH  WALDO  EMERSON—PART  SECOND. 

tendencies:  "My  wife  Lidian  is  an  incarnation  of 
Christianity — I  call  her  Asia — and  keeps  my  phi 
losophy  from  Antinomianism. ' '  From  this  and 
some  other  hints  we  infer  that  the  wife  was  the  in 
stitutional  anchor  in  that  theoretically  unstable 
household  of  which  the  husband  was  inclined  to  fly 
off  into  many  social  vagaries.  "We  fancy  that  Lidian 
Emerson  set  her  foot  down  with  some  energy 
against  Brook  Farm  and  many  other  wild  schemes 
of  the  time  floating  rainbow-like  everywhere  and 
very  seductive  to  "Waldo  Emerson.  I  have  often 
tried  to  fancy  why  he  called  his  wife  Asia — I  do 
not  know  that  he  ever  explained  the  term  himself— 
she  was  perchance  to  his  mind  the  embodiment  of 
that  oldest,  most  conservative  and  traditional  part 
of  our  globe,  and  also  a  primordial  Puritan  from 
the  original  fountain  at  Plymouth  rock  itself, 
whence  he  took  her  in  marriage.  On  the  whole  she 
stands  somewhat  in  the  background  of  Emerson's 
life,  yet  with  decision ;  she  plays  no  such  outspoken 
part  in  her  husband's  history  as  does  Jane  Carlyle 
in  that  of  her  darling  Scotch  tyrant :  nor  has  she  so 
much  cause  to  make  herself  famous.  Note  too  the 
light- throwing  expression :  ' '  she  keeps  my  philos 
ophy  from  Antinomianism, ' '  in  general  from  revolt 
against  law  and  institution.  Practically  she  did 
this  doubtless,  but  surely  not  in  theory,  as  many  of 
Emerson's  Essays  and  Addresses  prove.  Perhaps 
too  his  pet  name  of  her,  Queenie,  hints  some  sort  of 
sovereignty.  Thus  she  appears  the  ever-steadying 


EMERSON'S  CORRESPONDENCE.  293 

though  noiseless  balance-wheel  in  that  somewhat 
centrifugal  household. 

The  prime  fact  in  these  early  Letters  is  the  per 
vasive,  even  if  somewhat  muffled  cry  of  Carlyle: 
Help  me,  Cassius,  or  I  sink.  Then  follows  the  gen 
erous  and  continued  succor  given  by  Emerson  to 
his  submerging  friend.  The  turning-point  toward 
final  deliverance  seems  to  be  indicated  in  a  letter  of 
Carlyle  (1839)  :  "I  am  no  longer  poor,  but  have 
a  reasonable  prospect  of  existing.  Not  for  these 
twelve  years,  never  since  I  had  a  house  to  maintain, 
have  I  had  as  much  money  in  my  possession  as  even 
now."  All  of  which  is  due  to  friend  Emerson — 
verily  the  greatest  of  all  gifts,  that  of  economic 
freedom,  for  the  future.  Carlyle  confesses:  "at 
bottom  this  money  was  all  yours,  not  a  penny  of  it 
belonged  to  me."  But  he  has  it,  and  with  it  the 
choicest  object  money  can  buy — that  thunder-bolted 
Castle  of  Defiance  located  in  London  on  Cheyne 
Bow. 

From  a  purely  literary  point  of  view  probably 
the  best  part  of  this  Correspondence  is  Carlyle 's 
portrait-painting  of  men  whom  he  had  seen — 
sketches  memorable  not  for  their  justice,  but  for 
their  smiting  off-hand  vividness  and  vindictiveness. 
Suggestive  too  is  the  criticism  made  by  each  on  the 
other's  books.  Says  Carlyle  of  Emerson's  Essays: 
''the  sentences  are  very  brief,  and  did  not  always 
entirely  cohere  for  me  ...  the  paragraph  not 
as  a  beaten  ingot,  but  as  a  beautiful  square  bag  of 
duck-shot  held  together  by  r»s,nvas."  So  he  gently 


294:      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

touches  up  the  Emersonian  lack  of  organization. 
Then  this:  "I  object  that  you  are  still  a  solilo 
quizer  on  the  eternal  mountain-tops." 

More  emphatic  in  its  thrust  is  this  urgent  appeal : 
u<You  tell  us  with  piercing  emphasis  that  man's  soul 
is  great;  show  us  a  great  soul  of  a  man,  in  some 
work  symbolic  of  such  .  .  .  I  long  to  see  some 
concrete  Thing  well  Emersonized,  depictured  by 
Emerson,  filled  with  the  life  of  Emerson."  Carlyle 
here  and  in  other  places  .exhorts  Emerson  to  quit 
his  abstractions  and  to  take  up  realities — to  be  a 
Carlyle,  for  instance.  But  that  cannot  and  ought 
not  to  happen.  Each  has  validity  in  his  own  field ; 
let  him  express  himself  in  his  own  way.  Still  one 
may  be  permitted  to  think  that  there  is  a  sphere 
higher  than  either 's,  a  synthesis  over  both  yet  in 
cluding  both.  Each  is  a  one-sided  utterance  of  a 
greater  Whole  which  still  awaits  its  adequate  voice. 

III. 

EMERSON'S  POETRY 

.The  most  questioned  and  questionable  part  of 
Emerson's1  total  achievement :  Is  his  verse  really 
poetry?  Indeed  is  he  a  poet' at  all?  Such  inter 
rogations  were  often  propounded  during  the  au 
thor's  life,  and  they  -have  not  wholly  ceased  yet. 
But  it  is  now  generally  felt  that  any  definition  of 
poetry  which  excludes  Emerson,  would  cut  the  po 
etic  world  in  two  and  throw  away  a  good  half. 

Then,  having  accepted  these  poems,  how  shall  we 


EMERSON'S  POETRY,  295 

classify  them,  or  it  may  be,  organize  them  in  the 
totality  of  Emerson Vj  life-work,  so  that  we  may  see 
them  in  place  as  an  integral  part  of  his  biography  ? 
It  would  seem  that  the  deepest,  most  persistent  long 
ing  of  Emerson  was  to  be  poet.  He  had  other  life- 
lasting  aspirations,  but  probably  the  poetic  aspira 
tion  was  his  strongest,  though  he  painfully  felt  his 
shortcomings.  When  he  was  thirty-six  years  old, 
hence  about  the  middle  of  his  Creative  Decennium, 
after  he  had  often  tested  his  wings,  he  expresses  in 
a  letter  both  his  ambition  and  his  disappointment. 
"I  cannot  believe  but  one  day  I  shall  attain  to  that 
splendid  dialect,  so  ardent  is  my  wish  .  .  .  But 
up  to  this  hour  I  have  never  had  a  true  success  in 
such  attempts."  He  planned  a  long  organic  poem 
about  this  time,  but  it  flew  into  fragments,  which 
we  may  now  read  in  the  last  edition  of  his  Works. 
The  same  old  trouble :  he  could  not  organize  his 
atoms  in  a  living  Whole,  though  that  is  just  what 
he  would.  Still  he  kept  thinking  and  saying:  "I 
am  more  of  a  poet  than  anything  else ; ' '  and  one  of 
his  best  appreciators  has  declared  that  he  never 
wrote  anything  else  but  poetry,  even  in  his  co-called 
prose.  Doubtless  Emerson  conceived  his  primal  act 
of  writing,  the  efflux  from  above,  as  the  common 
inspiration  of  all  his  good  work,  metered  or  un- 
metered.  Still  on  the  whole  there  was  a  difference, 
internally  as  well  as  externally,  between  his  prose 
and  his  verse. 

Back  in  his  boyhood  we  learn  that  Emerson  read, 
memorized,  recited,  and  wrote    poetry.     Through 


296      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

his  Journal  snatches  of  verse  keep  rising  to  the  sur 
face  and  are  recorded ;  they  begin  early  in  the  first 
volume  when  he  was  seventeen  years  old,  and  push 
up  still  in  the  last.  Thus  a  stream  of  poetry  flows 
through  Emerson's  entire  life  welling  forth  spon 
taneously  from  the  primordial  sources.  Hence  we 
may  classify  it  fundamentally  as  diarial,  outbursts 
of  the  moment  strown  along  all  his  years.  Accord 
ingly  we  set  it  down  under  the  head  of  Origination, 
along  with  Emerson's  Journals  and  Epistles — all 
of  them  showing  the  primary  original  forms  of  his 
composition. 

In  fact,  the  impression  of  the  total  volume  of  Em 
erson  's  verse,  which  has  now  been  carefully  collect 
ed,  collated,  and  annotated,  persists  that  it  is  a  frag 
ment  and  made  up  of  fragments.  It  seems  a  part 
of  a  great  totality  never  realized  and  ordered  into 
a  self -consistent  unity.  Yet  all  through  it  may  be 
felt  the  aspiration  for  some  such  fulfilment  of  his 
poetic  hope.  "We  have  noticed  the  same  desire 
throbbing  up  in  his  Diary  and  in  his  Essays,  and 
especially  in  the  Essay  on  the  Poet  (Second  Se 
ries).  Undoubtedly  some  of  Emerson's  lyrics  are 
complete  as  lyrics,  which,  however,  are  by  their 
very  nature  momentary  pulsations  of  something 
greater  and  deeper.  Some  such  limitation  Emerson 
himself  felt  and  often  confessed. 

StiH  the  advantage  of  just  this  atomic  and  in 
complete  character  of  his  poetry,  must  not  be  for 
gotten.  It  is  far  easier  taken  in  these  homeopathic 
doses,  often  difficult  to  swallow  as  they  are.  Then 


EMERSON'S  POETRY.  297 

SucE  a  form  accorded  with  the  spirit  of  the  time, 
which  did  not  want  and  probably  could  not  com 
prehend  great  poetic  entireties.  Only  a  little  spurt 
of  verse  off  in  a  corner  would  be  tolerated  by  those 
grand  vehicles  of  literature,  the  newspaper  and  the 
magazine.  As  the  case  stood,  the  appreciation  of 
Emerson's  poetry  was  slow,  and  -has  hardly  yet 
fully  arrived. 

As  before  stated,  Emerson  versified  through  his 
entire  life,  pretty  much  in  the  same  fashion  and 
after  traditional  patterns,  though  of  course  he  has 
his  own  peculiar  note  or  timbre  in  singing  the  old 
meters.  His  ear  was  not  very  keen  for  rhythm; 
moreover  his  metrical  range  was  quite  limited,  be 
ing  mainly  slight  variations  on  the  doggerel  or  iam 
bic  tetrameter,  probably  the  easiest  and  most  pop 
ular  form  in  England,  and  in  Teutonic  poetry  gen 
erally.  His  dissonances  both  of  meter  and  of 
rhyme  have  been  much  censured,  in  my  judgment 
over-censured ;  right  discords  have  their  place  even 
in  most  musical  Beethoven.  Such  a  high-strung, 
perchance  neuropathic  ear  for  verse-tones,  as  that 
of  Swinburne,  to  take  an  extreme  instance,  is  not 
simply  an  affectation,  rather  it  is  a  disease — sense 
quite  dying  away  into  sounding  nonsense,  intelli 
gence  vanishing  into  a  jingling  rigmarole  of  words. 
The  same  tendency  is  often  heard  in  today 's  lyrical 
effusions.  For  such  unhealthiness  Emerson's  verse 
is  a  good  tonic,  with  his  stress  upon  the  thought 
and  his  neglect  (often  too  great)  of  the  measure. 

But  at  present  we  are  chiefly  concerned,  not  with 


298      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

Emerson's  total  output  of  verse,  but  with  that  of 
this  Epoch,  his  Creative  Decennium.  There  is  no 
doubt  of  his  poetical  activity  at  this  time,  though 
it  is  not  always  easy  to  date  his  poems,  as  they 
stand  in  his  Works.  His  Editor  seems  often  puz 
zled.  On  the  whole  he  appears  somewhat  secretive 
and  hesitating  about  this  phase  of  his  productivity, 
though  it  lay  nearest  to  his  heart.  One  of  his  chief 
interests  in  the  Dial  was  that  he  might  have  a  way 
of  trying  his  versicles,  little  by  little  on  the  public, 
for  we  have  already  heard  him  utter  his  doubt,  yet 
his  hope  concerning  this  his  dearest  field  of  en 
deavor.  The  result  was,  as  he  records,  that  he  re 
ceived  encouragement,  and  he  resolved  with  some 
hesitancy,  to  publish  an  edition  of  his  Poems.  Al 
ready  in  1843  he  states  that  he  received  two  re 
quests  from  publishers.  But  such  was  his  doubt  of 
himself  or  his  timidity  that  the  first  appearance  of 
the  little  volume  was  deferred  till  1847.  Still  it 
belongs  in  the  main  to  the  present  Decennium 
(1835-1845),  and  it  continues  to  form  the  basis  of 
Emerson's  poetical  reputation.  It  is  stamped  with 
the  original  creative  power  of  this  Epoch,  and  in  it 
can  be  often  traced  the  Transcendental  doctrine, 
and  still  more  Emerson's  personal  states  of  mind 
and  confessions. 

Here,  then,  concludes  that  line  of  Emerson's  ac 
tivity  which  seeks  to  put  together  the  more  rudi 
mentary  forms  of  his  genius — his  Journals,  his  Let 
ters,  and  his  Poems.  Each  of  them  runs  through 
his  whole  life,  but  t"Hey  all  culminate  both  as  to 


RETROSPECT  OF  THE  EPOCH.       299 

quantity  and  quality  in  the  present  Decennium. 
But  now  we  have  touched  the  point  in  Emerson's 
advance  where  we  are  to  recall  that  these  three  em 
bryonic  forms,  as  we  may  name  them  relatively, 
constitute  but  one'  part  or  phase  of  this  Creative 
Epoch's  total  accomplishment.  Accordingly  it  is 
here  in  place  to  throw  a  short  sweeping  glance 
backward  at  the  ground  passed  over. 

RETROSPECT  OF  THE  EPOCH 

Emerson  has  at  present  reached  the  central  sum 
mit  of  his  career,  to  which  he  has  been  hitherto  as 
cending,  and  from  which  he  is  henceforth  to  de 
scend.  Never  again  will  he  have  such  another  Cre 
ative  Epoch  as  that  which  he  has  just  completed. 
When  we  look  back  at  it,  we  are  lost  in  wonder  at  so 
much  and  so  great  excellence  in  so  brief  a  time. 

"Without  repeating  the  details,  we  may  well  recall 
its  three  parallel  lines  of  effort,  each  of  which  in 
itself  seems  more  than  one  very  busy  man's  work: 
Productivity,  Propagation,  Origination.  It  is  truly 
the  Great  Deed  of  Emerson' taken  by  itself  and  re 
garded  singly  as  a  human  achievement.  So  it 
should  be  contemplated  by  the  discriminating 
reader,  being  the  author's  greatest  monument, 
erected  by  himself  at  the  heart  of  his  total  life- 
work.  We  may  call  it  his  epical  act,  heroic  in  its 
proportions,  the  poet's  own  personal  Iliad,  not 
sung  indeed,  but  done. 

Emerson  is  forty-two  years  old  at  the  close  of 


300      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

this  Epoch ;  nearly  half  of  his  days  remain  to  him, 
but  they  are  quite  different  from  those  which  he  has 
just  gone  through  with  such  abounding  genetic  en 
ergy.  Having  done  the  colossal  deed  at  its  topmost, 
he  henceforth  seems  slowly  going  down  hill  into  the 
dark  valley,  his  creative  light  gradually  spending 
itself  to  the  limit.  Emerson  still  continues  to  write 
Essays,  Journals,  Letters,  Poems;  he  keeps  propa 
gating  his  ideas,  especially  by  lectures;  but  such 
work  is  largely,  though  not  wholly,  that  of  repeti 
tion,  illustration,  amplification.  In  the  deepest 
sense  his  literary  creation  is  now  complete,  though 
by  no  means  concluded. 

And  yet  a  very  important  original  element  is 
still  to  be  added  to  Emerson's  full  achievement.  If 
he  had  died  at  the  close  of  his  overfull  creative  De- 
cennium,  he  would  have  missed  the  better  portion 
of  his  destiny.  He  would  never  have  left  us  his 
finished  life,  which  is  his  greatest  work,  greater 
than  his  literary  production  which  is  indeed  but  a 
phase  or  part  thereof.  He  would  never  have  real 
ized  his  ideal  Biography,  which,  of  course,  he  was 
not  to  write  but  to  live. 

Accordingly,  Emerson  is  to  round  out  the  rest  of 
his  years  not  simply  with  a  creative  doing,  but  with 
a  creative  living  which  is  the  man's  true  whole 
ness.  For  life  is  larger  than  the  deed,  underlying 
it,  directing  it,  fulfilling  it.  That  is,  Emerson  has 
now  to  complete  his  Biography,  so  that  it  will  re 
veal  the  full  process  of  his  individual  life,  and 
therein  mirror  the  movement  of  all  Biography. 


or    THE    tf/'OC//.  \\§\ 

Such  was,  indeed,  Emerson's  own  conception,  for 
he  has  told  us  that  the  interest  of  Biography  lies  in 
the  fact  that  in  it  "this  particular  man  represents 
the  idea  of  Man."  Hence  this  particular  Emerson 
must  be  so  portrayed  in  his  life  as  to  show  it  to  b<- 
universal,  representing  "the  idea  of  Man."  Emer 
son  has  likewise  declared  that  "the  picture  of  the 
Standard  Man"  is  what  must  be  seen  in  a  right  Bi 
ography.  These  were  some  of  his  sudden  but  very 
suggestive  divinations  upon  this  subject.  Such  is 
his  prophecy  or  instinct,  which  he  often  stresses, 
whereof  we  may  set  down  one  of  his  latest  exam 
ples  :  ' '  We  have  all  of  us  a  certain  divination  and 
parturient  vaticination  in  our  minds  of  some  higher 
good  and  perfection"  lying  beyond  our  power  of 
achievement  and  even  our  knowledge.  Wherein  he 
takes  another  little  peep  at  his  biographic  soul. 

Henceforth  the  original  Emerson  is  not  to  be 
found  in  his  literary  activity,  which  becomes  at  bot 
tom  chiefly  a  re-affirmation  and  repetition,  often 
with  new  Emersonian  sentences  and  metaphors,  but 
he  is  to  be  grasped  in  the  entire  compass  of  his  life. 
His  doing  sinks  away  into  his  living,  of  which  it 
turns  to  one  phase  or  strand,  important,  but  not 
the  whole  man,  whose  creative  power  now  is  to  ex 
press  his  fully  rounded  Self,  as  it  moves  forward 
to  the  close. 

So  much  for  the  general  outlook  over  his  entire 
future  Biography.  But  just  at  present  we  are  to 
take  a  smaller  step  to  the  next  stage,  or  Epoch, 
which  we  have  already  designated  as  showing  a  de- 


302      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

cided  reaction  against  the  Epoch  which  we  have 
just  been  considering..  Moreover  this  stage  is  to 
reveal  Emerson  moving  in  the  regular  order  of  his 
psychical  evolution.  Accordingly,  now  follows  the 
second  stage  of  the  great  middle  Period  of  his  ca 
reer,  the  revolutionary,  whose  special  character 
istics  we  shall  set  forth  in  a  new  chapter  which  will 
show  no  small  contrast  with  the  one  just  gone  be 
fore. 


CHAPTER  FIFTH 

THE  RE- ACTION ARY  DECENNIUM  (1845-1855) 

To  mark  off  and  to  condense  in  a  word,  as  well  as 
we  can,  a  new  ten  years  of  the  grand  Emersonian 
discipline,  is  our  present  effort.  In  what  other  way 
can  we  take  up  and  appropriate  the  man  in  his 
truth  and  final  wholeness?  "We  have  already  ob 
served  Emerson  turning  aside  from  his  distinctive 
Transcendental  bent  and  its  expression  to  some 
thing  different,  if  not  opposite.  He  has  also  be 
come  estranged  from  his  doctrinal  disciples,  being 
repelled  by  what  he  deems  their  puerilities,  their 
antics,  their  extravagances.  Emerson  disgusted 
with  Emersonianism  is  his  present  self -dissolving 
condition.  So  he  deflects  from  abstract  doctrine  to 
concrete  life,  especially  as  it  is  represented  in 
Great  Men  whom  he  now  calls  representative. 
Hence  a  dominating  biographic  impulse  seizes  him 
(doubtless  with  considerable  influence  from  Car- 
lyle),  and  drives  him  to  write  biographies  typical 
or  representative.  Thus  he  shows  himself  in  reac 
tion  against  his  preceding  Epoch,  and  will  build  in 
his  temple  of  life  a  new  apartment  which  we  name 
the  Re-actionary  Decennium.  That  is,  he  will  re 
act  against  the  immediate  Transcendental  efflux, 
seeking  now  to  mediate  it  through  a  second  or  rep 
resentative  mind,  or  the  Great  Man. 

303 


304      RALPH  WALD'j  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

<Such,  then,  is  the  best  adjective  which  we  have 
been  able  to  find,  after  some  search  and  several 
changes,  in  order  to  designate  the  pervasive  char 
acter  as  well  as  the  place  of  this  coming  ten  years1 
Epoch  in  Emerson's  Life-Essay.  It  is  on  the 
whole  re-actionary,  the  counter-stroke  in  a  number 
of  ways  to  the  foregoing -Creative  Decennium,  even 
if  the  great  total  river  of  the  man's  activity  still 
sweeps  onward  to  its  goal.  So  we  are  to  see  that 
this  Epoch  now  at  hand  is  but  a  part  or  stage  of  a 
larger  movement,  which  we  have  named  the  Pe 
riod.  And  this  latter  again  is  one  of  the  great  arcs 
which  make  the  entire  round  of  his  career. 

Moreover  we  shall  find  that  this  Epoch  falls 
pretty  well  within  a  given  framework  of  time  from 
its  start  till  its  close — the  ten  years  lying  between 
1845-6  and  1855-6,  undoubtedly  with  strands  reach 
ing  out  before  and  after  these  dates,  which  may  be 
stretched  here  and  there,  though  not  broken.  For 
they  suggest  the  temporal  bounds  of  a  great  spirit 
ual  experience  in  the  total  Emersonian  evolution, 
and  thus  indicate  essential  landmarks  of  his  biog 
raphy. 

In  general,  then,  the  forthcoming  Epoch  has  in 
it  a  separative,  reactionary  cast;  Emerson  turns 
away,  within  limits,  from  what  he  has  thought, 
done,  and  been;  he  reveals  in  his  spirit  a  decided 
breach  with  his  immediate  Past,  which,  he  feels, 
must  at  least  be  overhauled,  even  if  not  altogether 
rejected.  The  culmination  of  this  reaction  may  be 
deemed  his  flight  to  England  during  the  greater 


THE  REACTIONARY  DECENNIUM.  3Q5 

«r 

part  of  a  year.  Moreover,  the  present  Decennium 
is  a  time  of  subsidence  for  Emerson's  genius,  which 
declines  both  in  the  quantity  and  quality  of  its  cre 
ative  power.  Is  such  a  cessation  merely  a  breath 
ing-spell  for  rest  and  recuperation,  or  is  the  lapse 
permanent  ?  Will  he  ever  regain  his  former  genetic 
energy  after  the  present  submergence  ?  So  we  may 
with  interest  ask  ourselves,  casting  an  outlook  upon 
the  man's  future. 

Yes,  he  will  come  back,  but  he  can  never  be  again 
the  same  Emerson.  So  much  we  may  premise.  As 
already  indicated,  he  has  creatively  delivered  his 
message,  and  it  is  printed,  planted,  propagated. 
Still  Emerson  has  much  to  carry  out  and  finish  in 
the  coming  time.  He  is  only  forty-two  years  old 
at  the  start  of  the  new  Epoch,  just  a  little  beyond 
the  middle  year  of  his  entire  life.  And  now  he 
seems  to  be  put  under  some  dark  discipline  as  if 
for  another  and  later  task.  -  Of  the  change  he  is 
himself  aware ;  we  have  already  noted  in  his  writ 
ings  certain  indications  of  its  presence  to  his 
mind.  But  does  he  give  any  hint  of  what  he  aspires 
to  make  out  of  himself  next  ?  Here  is  a  look  back 
ward  and  forward  belonging  to  1847:  "I  think  I 
have  material  enough  to  serve  my  countrymen  with 
thought  and  music,  if  only  it  was  not  in  scraps. ' ' 
Fragments  of  philosophy  and  poetry  (thought  and 
music)  he  has  in  abundance,  if  he  could  only  en 
dow  them  with  some  inner  order.  But  he  feels: 
"Men  do  not  want  handfuls  of  gold-dust  but  in 
gots.  ' '  This  last  word  recalls  the  criticism  of  Car- 


306      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND, 

lyle,  which  seems  to  have  struck  home :  ' '  the  para 
graph  not  as  a  beaten  ingot  but  as  a  bag  of  duck- 
shot  held  together  by  the  canvas"  is  what  Emer 
son  gives  us  in  his  best  work,  the  Essays,  according 
to  his  Scotch  friend.  Hence  we  find  him  lashing 
himself  in  his  Diary  (1846)  :  "The  one  good  in 
life  is  concentration,  the  one  evil  is  dissipation." 
Then  we  hear  him  praising  continuity,  and  hinting 
his  own  lack  of  it  in  life  and  work.  These  words 
we  can  hardly  interpret  as  momentary  fits  of  de 
spondency,  which  creep  at  times  upon  all  human 
kind;  rather  do  they  signify  a  stern  self-criticism, 
with  resolution  to  overcome  the  limitation.  Of  this 
he  has  now  become  completely,  even  painfully 
aware,  for  the  criticism  has  reached  him  from 
friend  and  foe,  as  well  as  from  himself. 

But  he  will  seek  henceforth  not  only  to  organize,  he 
will  study  also  to  systematize — a  word  which  seems 
strange  in  the  mouth  of  Emerson,  who  so  often, 
especially  in  later  life,  scouted  all  system  in  think 
ing.  Listen  to  him  in  his  present  stage :  ' '  The 
scholar's  courage  may  be  measured  by  his  power 
to  give  an  opinion  on  Aristotle,  Bacon  ...  If 
he  has  nothing  to  say  to  these  systems,  let  him  not 
pretend  to  skill  in  reading."  Emerson  often  in 
directly  calls  himself  the  scholar,  it  was  his  name 
for  his  present  vocation.  I  believe  that  he  here 
touches  upon  his  secret  ambition  for  the  coming 
years.  In  the  next  sentence  he  turns  to  himself  with 
a  sort  of  self-reproach :  ' '  But  here  I  am  with  so 
much  all  ready  to  be  revealed  to  me,  as  to  others, 


THE  REACTIONARY  DECENNIUM. 


if  only  I  could  be  set  aglow."  Which  seems  to 
mean  :  if  I  only  could  fuse  my  scattered,  amorphous 
material  in  the  fires  of  concentration.  But  what  is 
he  to  do?  "I  have  wished  for  a  professorship,"  to 
focus  my  distracted  mind  and  diffuse  labors  ;  but  no 
College  in  New  England  would  take  Emerson  even 
as  tutor  after  that  iconoclastic  Divinity  School  Ad 
dress.  And  the  Transcendental  Academy  appears 
to  have  dreamed  itself  into  non-entity,  with  so  many 
other  things  Transcendental  of  the  recent  glorious 
Decennium. 

Certainly  Emerson  is  in  a  searching  crisis  with 
himself  at  this  conjuncture.  He  shows  his  deep  in 
ner  breach,  his  complete  estrangement  from  his 
past  self  as  well  as  from  his  past  work.  He  hardly 
knows  which  way  to  turn,  and  we  may  hearken  him 
ruminating  to  himself  in  his  Diary:  "In  this 
emergency,  one  advises  Europe,  and  especially  Eng 
land."  There  is  little  doubt  that  this  adviser  is 
Emerson  himself,  and  he  will  soon  take  his  own 
advice,  as  the  only  feasible  plan.  Still  he  at  first 
revolts,  and  will  flee,  not  to  the  more  civilized  but 
to  the  less  civilized:  "If  I  followed  my  own  ad 
vices,  if  I  were  master  of  a  liberty  to  do  so,  I  should 
sooner  go  towards  Canada."  So  he  thinks  of  flight 
to  the  woods  of  the  North-West,  but  alas  !  he  has  not 
liberty;  the  institutions  of  society  fetter  him:  "I 
should  withdraw  myself  for  a  time  from  all  domes 
tic  and  accustomed  relations,  and  command  an  ab 
solute  leisure  with  books  —  for  a  time.  '  '  Thus  Em 
erson  reveals  himself  tossing  feverishly  in  life  's  bed 


308      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

from  this  side  to  that,  fantasying  what  to  do  with 
himself  in  this  new  stage  of  his  existence  which  has 
indeed  dawned,  but  which  keeps  tarrying  dimly  in 
the  twilight. 

However,  we  can  catch  out  of  these  unsettled 
shif tings  what  Emerson  longs  to  do:  he. will  smelt 
to  unity  his  hitherto  fragmentary  life  and  work, 
which  he  is  inclined  to  deem  a  failure;  or  at  least  a 
verdant  and  elementary  stage  of  his  discipline. 
This  is  what  must  now  be  transcended  as  soon  as 
possible.  Such  is  verily  the  bitter  irony  of  imme 
diate  fame;  really  Emerson  has  won  his  eternal 
laurels  in  the  past  Decennium,  but  time  only  can 
place  them  on  his  brow.  Still  the  deficiency  which 
he  feels  in  himself  is  none  the  less  genuine,  and  we 
may  well  admire  his  resolution  to  overcome  it  by 
new  studies,  new  self-discipline,  even  by  flight,  if 
that  may  be. 

So  we  construe  Emerson  at  the  beginning  of  the 
present  re-actionary  Decennium,  where  we  may 
trace  not  only  his  estrangement  from  the  past  but 
his  aspiration  for  the  future.  (See  his  Journals, 
Vol.  VII,  passim,  but  especially  pp.  252-3.)  But 
how  will  he  look  at  himself  toward  the  close  of  this 
Epoch,  say  some  eight  or  ten  years  later?  Here  is 
a  very  striking  paragraph  jotted  down  under  the 
date  of  May,  1854 :  "If  Minerva  offered  a  gift  and 
option,  I  would  say  give  me  continuity.  I  am  tired 
of  scraps.  I  do  not  wish  to  be  a  literary  or  intel 
lectual  chiffonier."  Evidently  another  thrust 
homewards ;  with  a  kind  of  disgiist  he  deems  him- 


THE  REACTIONARY  DECENNWM.  399 

self  but  a  spiritual  rag-picker.  Fragmentary  he 
still  regards  his  worl;,  in  this  decennial  retrospect, 
for  such  it  seems.  Then  follows  the  hot  contemptu 
ous  address  to  somebody :  ' '  Away  with  this  Jew 's 
rag-bag  of  ends  and  tufts  of  brocade,  velvet,  and 
cloth-of  gold!"  Is  not  that  an  allusion  to  the 
bright,  detached  sentences  of  Emerson 's  prose,  and 
also  of  his  verse?  His  longing  even  if  somewhat 
despairful,  is  still  for  unity,  which  he  expresses  in 
the  biographic  couplet : 

The  Asmodean  feat  be  mine 

To  spin  my  sand-heaps  into  twine. 

So  he  states  the  grand  Emersonian  problem  of 
authorship,  as  it  came  home  to  the  author  himself. 
Those  separated  grains  of  sand  (or  gold),  can  he 
not  forge  them  into  some  shape  of  unity  ?  It  would 
seem,  by  his  own  confession,  that  he  has  not  suc 
ceeded  after  this  fresh  trial  of  ten  years,  and  the 
productive  forties  of  life  have  all  sped  away  into  the 
sunken  abysm  of  the  past  without  the  fulfilment  of 
his  heart's  deepest  desire. 

It  is  true  that  Emerson  often  takes  an  opposite 
turn  and  expresses  his  disapproval  of  all  organiza 
tion  and  system.  In  another  mood  he  will  declare : 
"In  writing  my  thoughts  I  seek  no  order,  harmony, 
or  result."  And  this  sort  of  composition  he  some 
times  defends  as  the  highest.  Hence  the  question 
oomes  up :  Which  method  was  Emerson's  deeper, 
more  fundamental  conviction?  He  had  a  right  to 


310      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

esteem  well  and  to  uphold  what  he  had  done ;  there 
in  the  world  has  approved  his  achievement.  Still 
he  had  begun  to  feel  the  impassable  limit  to  his 
grander  ambition.  Perhaps  for  this  reason,  along 
with  others  thinkable,  he  puts  so  much  stress  upon 
Fate. 

Such,  however,  we  may  deem  the  sweep  of  the 
present  Epoch:  it  tells  Emerson's  desperate  strug 
gle  with  the  limits  developed  by  his  previous  life, 
of  which  limits  he  has  become  conscious.  It  was  a 
kind  of  subsidence,  a  purgatorial  discipline,  which 
partially  hamstrung  his  power  both  in  writ  and 
action.  After  a  time  of  extraordinary  productivity 
the  Powers  sent  him  back  into  himself,  there  in  se 
cret  to  reconstruct  his  Genius  for  a  new  original 
work,  if  this  be  possible.  What  thwarted  him? 
Something  internal  doubtless,  but  also  something 
external,  something  in  the  time  and  its  interfering 
events.  But  all  that  belongs  beyond  the  present 
Epoch,  to  which  we  must  specially  return  and 
mark  some  of  its  distinctive  characteristics. 

I.  The  first  peculiarity  noticeable  during  this 
Decennium  is  the  partial  paralysis  of  Emerson's 
creative  power,  when  compared  with  his  previous 
affluence.  His  zest  for  writing  droops,  though  it 
does  not  cease.  We  mark  the  diminution  at  the 
fountain-head ;  his  Diary,  measured  by  the  printed 
volumes  before  us,  falls  away  one-half,  the  spon 
taneous  gush  from  the  Over-Soul  is  by  no  means  so 
copious  as  it  was,  nor  is  it  so  ebullient  and  racy,  to 
our  mind.  What  is  the  cause  of  this  break,  not  sud- 


THE  REACTIONARY  DECENNWM.  3H 

den  but  gradually  creeping  over  the  man's  brain- 
work?  That  is  the  matter  which  we  have  already 
tried  to  elucidate. 

Still  further,  we  may  note  the  same  shrinkage  in 
his  published  letters ;  in  fact,  the  Carlyle-Emerson 
Correspondence  now  shrivels  to  nearly  one-third  of 
its  size  during  the  previous  Epoch.  And  there  is 
certainly  a  decline  in  its  interest  and  value  as  well 
as  style ;  it  is  staler,  having  lost  its  first  fresh  pulsa 
tion,  and  it  has  no  longer  its  earlier  mutual  warmth 
of  personality.  The  truth  is,  Emerson  has  com 
pleted  his  task  for  Carlyle,  having  practically  lifted 
him  into  economic  freedom.  Moreover  the  two 
friends  are  growing  asunder  in  their  views  of  life 
and  of  the  times.  Their  friendship  remains  and 
will  remain,  but  it  slows  up  a  good  deal  and  for 
good  reasons.  Raying  hot  from  their  first  incan 
descent  center,  their  life-lines  diverge  more  and 
more  to  cooler  zones. 

In  Emerson's  literary  production  during  this 
Epoch,  there  is  no  such  original  work  as  the  Es 
says.  Here  again  we  observe  a  falling-off  both  in 
amount  and  excellence.  I  think,  too,  that  the  careful 
reader  will  now  observe  a  re-action  against  the  lit 
erary  form  which  he  had  been  employing,  namely 
the  Essay.  Nothing  under  that  title  will  be  writ 
ten  during  this  Epoch,  he  seems  trying  to  unify 
himself  and  what  he  calls  his  scraps.  Still  he  can 
not  well  change  his  skin;  the  Essay  is  his  most 
natural  art-form,  or  the  proper  body  to  the  soul  of 


312      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

Transcendentalism.     It  will  persist  under  diverse 
outer  masks  to  his  last  printed  book. 

And  in  regard  to  the  new  doctrine,  Emerson 
drops  into  a  state  of  relative  quiescence ;  the  prop- 
agandism  wanes,  though  he  by  no  means  abjures 
the  faith.  Already  we  have  seen  how  he  shrinks 
from  the  cohorts  of  fanatical  reformers,  who  at  least 
belong  to  the  same  movement,  and  are  classed  with 
him  by  the  great  public  in  spite  of  his  protests,  of 
ten  satirical.  Nor  could  his  writings  be  called  suc 
cessful;  the  fate  of  the  Dial  with  its  unpaid  bills 
which  he  had  to  meet  from  his  own  purse,  was  a 
poignant  lesson  of  disillusion. 

II.  Accompanying  this  paralysis,  and  in  part 
causing  it,  rises  the  next  fact :  with  his  total  Amer 
ican  environment  Emerson  is  now  at  odds.  His  dis 
gust  we  might  almost  call  continental — he  berates 
his  city  Boston,  his  State  Massachusetts,  and  his 
whole  Nation  along  with  its  government.  We  are 
to  remember  that  in  this  Epoch  took  place  the  an 
nexation  of  Texas,  the  Mexican  "War,  the  passage 
of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  the  Repeal  of  the  Mis 
souri  Compromise.  To  the  entire  national  trend  of 
the  time  Emerson,  the  anti-slavery  man,  was  op 
posed,  though  nature  gave  him  little  political  bent ; 
indeed  he  disliked  specially  the  State  as  such  as  well 
as  other  institutions,  which  it  secured  by  its  law. 
This  had  never  been  Emerson's  world  in  heart  or 
head,  though  he  acquiesced  in  it  from  the  outside. 
But  now  he  begins  to  hate  it,  to  antagonize  it,  and 
will  flee  from  its  baleful  presence. 


THE  REACTIONARY  DECENNIUM.  3,13 

One  of  the  hardest  strokes  for  him  was  that  the 
most  famous  Bostonians  had  fallen  from  their  ped 
estals  through  an  inglorious  betrayal  of  principle. 
Daniel  Webster,  once  his  ideal,  sank  to  the  very 
bottom,  in  Emerson's  view,  during  these  ten  years. 
Edward  Everett,  whom  Emerson  as  a  boy  studying 
oratory  had  followed  from  place  to  place  in  admi 
ration,  went  the  same  downward  way.  Thus  the 
home  heroes  of  his  youth  had  failed  at  the  supreme 
test.  If  we  may  trust  certain  expressions  in  his 
Diary,  he  begins  to  think  that  America  can  pro 
duce  no  worthy  manhood,  as  it  has  produced  no 
worthy  writ.  He  affirms:  "As  far  as  the  purpose 
and  genius  of  America  is  yet  reported,  it  is  a 
sterility  and  no  genius. ' '  (Editor 's  Address,  1847. ) 

Still  Waldo  Emerson  is  ever  the  surpriser,  who 
delights  to  take  a  sudden  whirl  counter  to  what  he 
has  just  said  and  done.  The  following  insertion  in 
his  Journals  (1845)  gives  one  of  his  farthest-reach 
ing  glimpses  not  only  into  the  future  of  his  own 
time,  but  into  the  historical  process  of  all  time: 
"the  annexation  of  Texas  looks  like  one  of  those 
events  which  retard  or  retrograde  the  civilization 
of  the  ages.  But  the  World-Spirit  is  a  good  swim 
mer,  and  storms  and  waves  cannot  drown  him.  He 
snaps  his  finger  at  laws. ' '  This  flash  from  the  High 
est  abruptly  darts  down  upon  the  reader,  and  then 
quits  him  for  good,  while  the  author  runs  off  into 
his  carpings,  though  he  knows  and  says  that  "criti 
cism  misleads, ' '  especially  the  critic.  But  where  did 
he  pick  up  that  word  and  conception,  World-Spirit  ? 


314      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

It  is  not  one  of  his  terms,  and  we  hear  little  or  noth- 
•ing  of  it  again.  Possibly  some  student  of  German 
Philosophy,  even  of  Hegel,  had  flung  it  at  him  in  a 
discussion. 

III.  Accordingly  we  are  not  surprised  when  we 
learn  that  Emerson  starts  for  Europe  after  ponder 
ing  over  the  matter  for  some  two  or  three  years. 
Indeed  we  have  to  hold  that  in  such  decision  he  fol 
lowed  at  last  his  basic  trend,  which  turned  him 
away  from  migration  to  the  West.  This  latter  he 
entertained  only  in  theory,  while  he  would  not  or 
could  not  realize  it  practically.  His  ancestors  had 
not  seriously  stirred  from  the  one  locality  for  quite 
two  centuries,  forefather  Peter  Bulkeley  seems  to 
have  exhausted  the  migratory  spirit  in  the  Emer 
sonian  line  of  descent.  Rather  the  movement  will 
be  now  backward,  to  the  earliest  fountains  of  his 
people 's  tradition.  Again  we  have  to  ruminate :  a 
singular  turn  in  the  anti-traditional  Emerson.  But 
we  have  never  faile.d  to  find  a  deep  strong  under 
current  of  prescription  beneath  his  furious  torrent 
of  defiance  of  all  transmitted  social  order. 

On  October  5,  1847,  Emerson  sailed  from  Boston, 
and  in  a  little  over  a  fortnight  landed  at  Liverpool, 
and  thence  proceeded  soon  to  London,  where  he  at 
once  betook  himself  to  the  Carlyle  house.  It  was 
ten  o'clock  at  night  when  "the  door  was  opened  to 
me  by  Jane  Carlyle,  and  the  man  himself  was  be 
hind  her  with  a  lamp  in  the  entry.  They  were  very 
little  changed  from  their  old  selves  of  fourteen 


THE  REACTIONARY  DECENNIUM.  315 

years  ago, ' '  when  Emerson  had  left  them  at  Craig- 
enputtock  in  Scotland. 

Thus  the  traveler  had  reached  the  first  goal  of  his 
voyage.  He  sees  the  man  who  gave  him  the  primal 
push  toward  Transcendentalism,  even  if  the  seed  fell 
upon  fertile  and  well-prepared  soil.  Since  that 
early  visit  in  1833  Emerson  has  passed  through  his 
Creative  Epoch,  with  memorable  result ;  also  he  has 
distinctly  moved  out  of  that  Epoch  and  has  entered 
upon  another :  what  is  it  to  be  ?  He  was  well  aware 
of  his  partial  paralysis  in  creative  power,  or  let  it 
be  called  his  quiescence ;  can  he  not  receive  per 
chance  a  fresh  impetus  from  that  old  Carlylean 
source  ?  Some  such  hope  doubtless  hovered  faintly 
in  the  mind  of  Emerson ;  certainly  a  strong,  if  not 
the  strongest  wish  of  his  journey  was  to  see  Car- 
lyle  again. 

It  is  true  that  each  must  have  known  of  the 
other's  divergence  from  that  first  stage.  The  fact 
had  been  privately  written  and  publicly  printed; 
Emerson  had  criticized  Carlyle  and  Carlyle  had 
criticized  Emerson,  gently  but  penetratingly  in  both 
cases.  Still  each  remembered  of  the  other  some 
thing  greater  than  their  books;  for  each  was  en 
dowed  with  a  unique  compelling  personality.  Could 
not  that  be  tapped  for  a  renewed  creative  efluence  ? 
Let  the  result  be  stated  after  the  test  of  months  of 
intercourse :  both  were  disappointed,  the  former  act 
of  inspiration  could  not  be  repeated,  only  once  was 
it  possible.  Indeed  what  else  could  be  expected 
after  so  many  years?  Each  is  reported  as  saying 


316      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

of  the  other:  I  looked  for  greater  things  of  him, 
my  hopes  he  has  not  realized.  They  called  each 
other  names,  not  venomous  indeed,  but  pointed :  you 
are  a  fatalist,  says  one ;  you  are  a  gymnosophist  says 
the  other.  Still  they  remained  friends  and  wound 
up  by  taking  a  trip  together  to  Stonehenge,  of 
which  pre-historic  monument  both  knew  nothing, 
and  so  could  agree. 

Such  was  the  event  of  main  biographic  interest  in 
this  visit  of  Emerson.  The  other  things  were  not 
without  import,  but  seem  relatively  external.  He 
saw  many  literary  people  of  distinction,  ate  numer 
ous  English  dinners,  was  gratified  to  find  himself 
famous  in  old  ancestral  England,  caught  some 
glimpses  of  its  society,  especially  of  its  ancient  aris 
tocracy  ;  in  general  he  drank  with  relish  of  the  time- 
honored  traditions  of  the  most  traditional  people  in 
Europe — he  the  anti-traditionalist.  Such  was  his 
new  experience  which  he  will  tell  in  a  book.  But 
how  different  from  what  he  had  been  and  done  hith 
erto  !  Surely  a  dip  into  the  past  was  just  what  he 
must  have  needed  most. 

In  the  foregoing  account  we  have  given  what  was 
the  inner  propulsion  of  Emerson  back  to  England, 
as  we  regard  the  event.  He,  however,  states  the 
matter  somewhat  differently:  "The  occasion  of  my 
second  visit  to  England  was  an  invitation  .  .  . 
to  read  a  series  of  lectures"  in  certain  of  its  cities. 
Thus  the  Emersonian  Lyceum  had  been  called  back 
ward  to  Europe.  His  success  was  good  in  some 
places,  less  good  in  other  places.  The  last  course 


THE  REACTIONARY  DECEXNIUM.  317 

in  London  he  deemed  disappointing,  and  he  was 
quite  ready  to  start  for  home. 

Still  he  failed  not  to  touch  upon  the  strong  am 
bition  of  his  life :  to  organize  a  First  Philosophy, 
which  would  be  ' '  an  enumeration  of  the  laws  of  the 
world " — laws  common  to  both  Nature  and  Mind. 
For  in  physical  science  he  seeks  ' '  a  universal  cipher 
in  which  we  read  the  rules  of  the  Intellect ' '  as  well 
as  of  the  Will  or  "moral  practice."  Again  we  cry 
out  in  eagerness :  Give  us  that  universal  cipher,  0 
Emerson,  which  runs  through  all  things  spiritual 
and  physical,  and  unifies  them  into  one  universal 
science,  verily  the  science  of  all  science.  Let  that 
be  the  grand  new  departure  for  the  present  Epoch, 
which  will  then  overtop  thy  Creative  Decennium, 
great  as  it  is.  In  thy  human  brain  lies  the  universe 
"with  all  its  opulence  of  relations;"  eject  it  into 
form  for  us,  that  we  may  know  it  too. 

Will  he  do  it — can  he?  That  is  probably  the 
most  insistent  present  problem  of  Emerson's  evo 
lution.  We  have  already  seen  it  rise  to  the  surface 
years  ago,  and  it  will  again  come  up  in  the  future 
when  the  final  answer  can  be  given.  But  greater, 
more  convincing  is  his  personality  than  anything 
he  writes  or  says.  Miss  Martineau  alludes  to  this 
very  elusive  but  quite  all-subduing  element  in  the 
presence  of  the  man  who  cannot  be  truly  "appre 
hended  till  he  is  seen.  He  conquers  minds  as  well 
as  hearts  wherever  he  goes. ' '  Yet  he  does  not  seem 
to  convert  anybody  to  his  doctrine ;  it  is  the  man, 
the  whole  of  him,  that  captivates.  Wherein  we  may 


318      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

catch  a  hint  for  his  biography.  The  total  career  of 
Emerson  must  be  seen  and  felt  irradiating  every 
separate  work  of  his;  the  round  of  his  entire  life 
must  integrate  every  arc  of  it,  even  the  smallest: 
thus  we  may  still  restore  in  thought  and  feeling  the 
magic  of  his  vanished  personality.  Such  is  the  true 
function  of  biography :  it  reproduces  the  total  man 
as  he  is  in  his  allness  and  truth ;  it  may  bring  him 
back  more  completely,  if  not  more  vividly  than  he 
could  be  seen  in  actual  life  strung  along  the  slow- 
stepping  years. 

IV.  Emerson  took  a  returning  ship  at  Liverpool 
July  15,  1848,  and  reached  home  near  the  close  of 
the  same  month  after  a  whirling  panorama  of  rapid 
experiences  for  some  nine  months.  As  we  read 
him,  he  was  glad  to  get  back  in  spite  of  all  his  love 
for  England.  At  once  he  starts  with  his  traveling 
University,  which  he  now  sees  to  be  his  chief  prac 
tical  vocation  for  the  future.  He  was,  however,  still 
internally  occupied,  laboring  at  his  destiny,  while 
writing  books.  He  had  by  no  means  yet  wrought 
himself  free  of  his  reactionary  Epoch.  His  trip 
abroad  may  have  brought  him  respite,  but  not  re 
covery.  Through  all  his  admiration,  he  shows  signs 
of  re-action  against  England,  for  re-action  was  his 
pervasive  mood  underneath  all  his  optimism. 

The  wandering  lecturer  with  his  Lyceum  keeps 
moving  westward,  imparting  his  message  both  by 
his  speech  and  by  his  presence.  "Well  may  we  stop 
and  meditate  over  the  following  record  dated, 
Springfield,  Illinois,  January  11,  1853.  "Here  I 


THE  REACTIONARY  DECENNIVM.  319 

am  in  the  mud  of  the  prairies.  My  chamber  is  a 
cabin,  my  fellow-boarders  are  legislators.  Two  or 
three  governors  or  ex-governors  live  in  the  house. ' ' 
So  Emerson  has  given  a  lecture  about  this  date  at 
the  mud-burg  where  then  lived  the  supreme  coming 
man  of  destiny,  Abraham  Lincoln,  as  yet  a  fameless 
country  lawyer.  One  queries :  Did  the  latter  go  to 
hear  Emerson's  discourse,  which  must  have  been 
something  of  an  event  in  the  little  town?  Very 
likely.  In  mid  winter  the  Illinois  mire  was  deepest, 
and  Lincoln  at  this  time  was  probably  at  home  from 
the  circuit.  Of  course  the  matter  is  not  vouched 
for  by  any  document,  as  far  as  we  know.  But  so 
much  can  be  affirmed :  Here  for  some  hours  on  the 
same  spot  Fate  has  filliped  together  the  two  most 
representative  men  of  America,  even  if  they  belong 
to  wholly  different  spheres  of  human  endeavor.  One 
is  sprung  of  the  old  North-East,  the  greatest  man 
of  thought;  the  other  belongs  to  the  new  North- 
West,  the  greatest  man  of  action ;  the  first  finds  his 
ultimate  in  Morals,  the  second  rests  upon  the  bed 
rock  of  Institutions.  Time  will  show  that  they  both 
have  a  supreme  gift  in  common :  to  write  down  the 
eternal  word  for  their  people.  Looking  back 
through  more  than  half  a  century,  they  may  be  ac 
claimed  the  two  sovereign  wielders  of  the  pen,  the 
greatest  that  America  has  produced — each  of  them 
being  highly  characteristic  of  his  own  section  of  the 
country. 

Now  comes  to  light  a  significant  fact  which  also 
belongs  to  both  of  them  at  this  date :  each  is  in  his 


320      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

own  way  struggling  through  a  peculiar  purgatorial 
discipline,  each  is  living  in  a  breach  with  himself 
and  his  country  and  his  time,  each  has  sunk  down 
from  a  previous  higher  activity  into  what  we  have 
called  a  state  of  subsidence — an  Epoch  of  outer  re 
action  but  also  of  inner  self-criticism  and  of  conse 
quent  self-reconstruction.  Lincoln  has  been  in  Con 
gress  for  one  term,  then  through  his  course  on  the 
Mexican  War  he  has  been  practically  set  aside  by 
his  constituency ;  he  has  returned  from  the  National 
Capital  to  his  little  town,  and  resumed  his  little 
practice  of  the  law,  in  a  mood  of  deep  spiritual 
scission  and  humiliation.  He  reflects  the  double 
Nation  in  his  own  doubleness,  and  through  a  sex 
ennial  labor  he  must  knead  anew  himself  into  unity, 
till  he  can  proclaim  out  of  his  own  oneness :  this  Na 
tion  cannot  remain  half -slave  half-free.  Let  it  here 
be  said  that  this  part  of  Lincoln's  life  is  apt  to  be 
neglected,  since  it  receives  almost  no  notice  from 
our  popular  Lincoln  biographers;  but  rightly  it 
forms  a  great  spiritual  turning-point  of  his  career. 
Such  is  the  surprising  co-incidence  in  the  evolu 
tion  of  the  two  supreme  American  contemporaries. 
And  now  let  us  cast  our  glance  forward  to  the  fact 
that  these  two  men,  so  far  apart  in  space,  vocation, 
and  culture,  make  the  same  turn  at  the  same  time 
through  the  same  national  events — the  recovery 
from  their  re-action  and  subsidence  through  the 
Repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  and  its  conse 
quences  (1854-5).  This  is  the  striking  parallelism 
which  now  begins  between  their  lives,  indicating 


THE  HKACTlOXMfY 


that  a  common  supernal  current,  that  of  the  Spirit 
of  the  Age,  is  pouring  through  both  and  determin 
ing  their  biography,  be  the  outer  circumstances  as 
diverse  as  can  be  in  their  totally  different  spheres 
of  action. 

Accordingly  somewhere  about  1855  we  shall  be 
hold  Emerson  moving  across  old  limits  into  a  new 
Epoch  after  a  decennial  experience  in  a  kind  of 
underworld.  To  be  sure,  this  change  has  already 
shown  many  signs  of  its  coming.  He  will  rise  from 
his  submergence,  re-act  against  his  re-action,  and 
start  over  again  with  a  fresh  outlook. 

But  at  present  our  task  is  to  consider  a  few  of 
the  more  important  works  of  this  Decennmm,  and 
to  let  some  kind  of  order  gleam  through  them  and 
thereby  illustrate  the  entire  Epoch.  It  was  pe 
culiarly  a  Plutarchian  biographic  time  with  Emer 
son;  his  mind  was  turned  to  writing  the  concrete 
lives  of  Great  Men  instead  of  the  abstractions  of  the 
Essays.  That  is,  he  would  now  take  Plato  himself 
instead  of  Plato's  virtues.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
the  influence  of  Carlyle  upon  his  present  direction 
was  important  and  helped  him  enter  upon  this  new 
stage  of  his  life's  evolution.  Hence  it  is  less  orig 
inal,  being  determined  more  from  the  outside  than 
his  previous  Epoch,  being  indeed  a  re-action  against 
his  own  transcendental  creation  as  directly  effluent 
to  him  from  above. 

It  has  been  already  noted  that  Emerson's  cre 
ative  power  undergoes  a  great  lessening  during  the 
present  Epoch  —  verily  a  kind  of  writer's  paralysis. 


322      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

This  was  in  part  a  physical  backstroke  from  the 
prodigious  outpour  of  the  preceding  ten  years; 
surely  Emerson  deserves  a  rest.  But  of  course  the 
deeper  fact  of  it  was  the  spiritual  re-action.  Still 
Emerson  continued  to  write,  and  to  write  in  a  some 
what  changed  vein.  For  reasons  already  given  he 
sought  a  new  art-form  for  his  writ.  Four  signifi 
cant  works  (leaving  out  minor  compositions)  we  set 
down  here. 

I.    Representative  Men — All  European. 

IT.  The  Representative  Woman — American,  Mar 
garet  Fuller. 

III.  The  Representative  Nation — the  book  known 
as  English  Traits. 

IV.  The  Representative  Man — American,  Daniel 
"Webster,  who  is  held  up  not  as  an  examplar  but  as 
a  warning,  or  rather  as  the  Great  American  Failure, 
verily  the  New  England  Judas  or  Ichabod. 

The  reader  will  notice  running  through  all  these 
four  pieces  the  term  representative,  which  is  used 
by  Emerson  himself  in  each  case,  though  only  once 
in  the  actual  title.  Evidently  his  interest  during 
this  entire  Decennium  is  in  persons  who  represent 
something,  and  he  is  going  to  tell  what.  Such  a 
theme,  we  may  re-insist,  is  different,  both  in  its 
general  scope  as  well  as  in  its  literary  presentation, 
from  what  the  author  has  written  in  the  foregoing 
Epoch,  even  if  the  style,  the  mannerisms  as  well  as 
the  soul,  be  still  Emersonian.  -Through  his  work  he 
becomes  himself  representative,  no  longer  so  vari 
ously  and  spontaneously  generative  as  before ;  we 


REPRESENTATIVE  MEN.  ;]9:] 

may  well  think  him  a  speaking  representative  who 
represents  in  his  work  these  different  representa 
tive  characters. 


REPRESENTATIVE  MEN 

Such  is  the  printed  caption  of  the  new  book, 
which  may  be  taken  as  a  kind  of  overture  to  the 
new  Epoch,  with  its  key-note  struck  in  the  word 
representative.  We  are  to  make  clear  to  ourselves 
that  such  a  subject  and  such  a  title  indicate  in  Em 
erson  a  re-action  from  his  antecedent  time  and 
work,  even  if  long  ago  in  his  Diary  the  word  and 
thought  may  be  found  along  with  his  conception  of 
the  biographic  Standard  Man. 

We  behold  here,  accordingly,  a  collection  of  the 
biographies  of  Great  Men  w^ho  are  representative ; 
thus  Emerson  suggests  in  advance  his  task.  Repre 
sentative  of  what  ?  Of  important  eras  in  thought 
•and  action  ;  these  men  have  to  bring  down  t  i  from 
the  supersensible  regions"  things  otherwise  not  ac 
cessible  to  us  here  below,  and  thereby  "acquaint  us 
with  new  fields  of  activity."  Almost  in  spite  of 
himself  Emerson  here  describes  the  Representative 
Man  as  the  mediator  between  the  two  worlds,  super 
sensible  and  sensible.  But  what  does  he  say  is  the 
object  of  such  supernal  impartation  ?  This  is  what 
he  adds:  such  knowledge  is  not  for  its  own  worth, 
but  "it  cools  our  affection  for  the  old,"  for  the 
transmitted,  for  tradition,  being  an  antidote  against 


324      UALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

the  Emersonian  devil.  Such  is  the  chief  use  of  the 
Great  Man,  as  we  read  it  in  Emerson's  introduc 
tion  on  the  Uses  of  Great  Men. 

Here  we  observe  that  this  book  with  its  theme  in 
dicates  a  re-action  against  the  previous  Epoch  of 
Emerson  and  its  doctrine.  For  if  Transcenden 
talism  insisted  upon  anything,  it  was  the  immediate 
transmission  of  the  Upper  Power  or  the  Over-Soul 
to  the  communing  individual,  of  the  Alone  to  the 
alone,  without  any  intermediary,  however  great. 
But  now  Emerson  writes  a  work  which  implies  some 
such  intermediary,  even  if  he  pares  him  down  as 
much  as  he  can.  Though  he  employs  the  term 
Great  Men,  he  re-acts  against  his  own  usage  with 
a  protest,  crying:  "But  Great  Men!  the  word  is 
injurious!"  Then  he  proceeds  to  point  out  its 
dangers  which  are  summed  up  in  that  infernal 
power,  the  insidious  influence  of  the  Past,  Hear 
him  admonish :  ' '  True  genius  seeks  to  defend  us 
against  itself  .  .  .  will, not  impoverish  but  will 
liberate  and  add  new  senses."  So  he  shouts  a 
danger-signal,  but  in  that  note  of  warning  lies 
subtly  ensconced  the  very  mediation  of  G-enius 
against  which  he  warns  us,  since  through  its  inter 
position  we  win  us  a  new  liberty.  What  more  does 
any  person  want  of  Genius,  of  a  Shakespeare,  of  a 
Goethe,  yea  of  an  Emerson  whose  whole  influence 
has  now  become  also  traditional,  that  of  a  mediator 
through  his  writings  ? 

Again  we  see  him  raise  his  finger:  "There  is  a 
speedy  limit  to  heroes,"  which  seems  to  be  a -hit  at 


REPRESENTATIVE  MEN.  325 

Carlyle's  Heroes  and  Hero-worship,  against  which 
this  book  of  Emerson  strikes  often  an  antagonistic 
undertone.  '  *  All  men  are  at  last  of  a  size ;  there 
are  no  common  men. ' '  True  enough  in  a  sense,  all 
men  are  selves,  Egos,  yet  they  are  likewise  very  di 
verse,  and  Emerson  is  wrestling  with  that  diversity 
in  its  supreme  manifestation,  called  Genius.  The 
fact  is,  he  hardly  knows  what  to  do  with  it,  since  it 
has  the  power  of  transmitting  itself  through  time, 
whereby  it  becomes  a  mighty  tradition,  Emerson's 
Satanic  evil-worker.  He  can  even  cite  profanity: 
"Damn  George  Washington,"  for  the  fame  of  his 
tyrannical  virtues.  So  Emerson  with  a  curse 
leaves  him  out  of  his  Representative  Men  as  well  as 
every  other  well-known  American.  If  we  must  have 
a  hero,  we  shall  take  him  from  afar. 

Thus  Emerson  makes  a  wry  face  at  individual 
Genius,  even  while  writing  about  it,  for  it  is  a  bulky 
fact  in  the  race's  record.  However  he  takes  a  pe 
culiar  refuge  in  "the  Genius  of  Humanity,"  and 
he  claims  this  to  be  what  he  intends  to  discourse 
upon,  "the  real  subject  whose  biography  is  written 
in  our  annals."  So  he  will  wing  his  flight  "to  an 
elemental  region  where  the  individual  is  lost,  or 
wherein  all  touch  by  their  summits. ' '  In  such  way 
he  will  get  rid  of  that  troublesome  individual  Ge 
nius,  source  of  so  much  evil,  especially  in  the  mat 
ter  of  tradition.  Still  we  have  to  note  that  in  the 
execution  of  his  work  he  adheres  very  closely  to  said 
individual  Genius,  using  the  latter 's  name  and 
deeds.  It  is,  accordingly  somewhat  surprising  that 


326     RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

we  do  not  hear  more  of  the  universal  Genius,  the 
presiding  Spirit  of  History,  or  the  World-Spirit,  to 
which  he  has  proclaimed  his  allegiance. 

Hardly  does  Emerson  appear  at  one  with  himself 
in  this  book.  The  theme  in  its  essence  runs  counter 
to  his  most  cherished  doctrine  of  the  immediate  ef 
flux  of  the  divine  into  the  human  soul,  which  act 
allows  as  we  have  already  often  marked,  no  media 
tion,  not  even  the  Mediator  Himself.  The  Great 
Man  may  be  toned  down  into  the  Representative 
Man,  but  the  difficulty  inheres.  Still  there  are 
glimpses  of  the  highest  worth  in  this  book,  and  Em 
erson  remains  grandly  Emersonian.  The  individ 
ual  Genius  ''appears  as  the  exponent  of  a  vaster 
mind  and  will."  So  far,  so  good;  but  the  reader 
asks,  exponent  to  whom  of  this  lofty  sovereignty? 
No  distinct  answer.  Then  follows  another  flaming 
sentence  to  the  same  purport:  "The  opaque  Self 
becomes  transparent  with  the  light  of  the  First- 
Cause."  Nobly  conceived  and  worded;  but  again 
we  beg :  transparent  to  whom  ?  The  response  is  not 
heard,  though  the  implication  probably  is:  to  the 
people  who  have  no  such  light,  to  the  folk  without 
genius.  But  alack!  that  would  also  imply  the  ac 
ceptance  of  authority,  of  a  mediating  principle,  yea 
of  that  diabolic  tradition,  which  must  not  be  uttered. 

So  Emerson,  do  what  he  may,  cannot  get  rid  of 
the  intermediary  between  the  Over-Soul  and  his 
Under-Soul.  Indeed  just  this  intermediary  is  the 
Great  Man  at  his  best;  his  supreme  function  is  to 
mediate  the  universal  Spirit  with  the  individual 


REPRESENTATIVE  MEN.  327 

man  who  otherwise  may  not  have  the  gift  to  partic 
ipate.  Many  hints  and  implications  of  such  a  po 
tency  of  the  Great  Man  we  may  find  in  Emerson, 
but  they  remain  partial — Emersonian  glimpses,  in 
timations,  prophecies. 

When  we  come  to  look  at  his  six  Representative 
Men,  they  all  represent  Europe,  not  one  from  his 
own  country  or  from  the  Orient.  No  Washington 
or  Franklin  for  him,  though  they  are  of  the  least 
tradition;  such  a  fact  we  have  to  take  as  one  sign 
of  his  re-action.  He  had  also  spoken  of  a  common 
principle  running  through  and  integrating  all  Bi 
ography  ;  but  it  is  certainly  not  explicit  in  these  ex 
amples,  of  which  each  goes  pretty  much  its  own 
way.  Still  they  are  all  Emersonian,  not  only  in 
style  but  also  in  the  author's  own  soul-portraiture. 
Holmes  has  put  this  with  insight :  "Emerson  holds 
the  mirror  up  to  them  at  just  such  an  angle  that  we 
see  his  own  face  as  well  as  that  of  his  hero" — we 
might  say,  in  that  of  his  hero.  Thus  the  present 
book  is  ultimately  biographical — a  fact  known  and 
even  formulated  by  Emerson.  He  says  tersely  that 
"Shakespeare  is  the  only  biographer  of  Shakes 
peare,"  which  means  also  that  Emerson  is  the  only 
biographer  of  Emerson. 

The  first  three  of  his  heroes — Plato,  Swedenborg, 
Montaigne — are  his  favorites  by  inner  choice ;  the 
second  three  seem  rather  external  to  him — Shakes 
peare,  Napoleon,  Goethe — he  took  these  more  from 
tradition  than  from  himself.  Goethe  he  accepted 
largely  on  Carlyle  's  word ;  Shakespeare  really 


328      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

meant  less  to  him  than  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  or 
perhaps  than  Ben  Jonson ;  Napoleon 's  military  and 
political  sphere  lay  quite  outside  of  Emerson's 
world.  Still  he  weaves  around  these  names  many 
suggestive  and  beautiful  sentences,  almost  as  if 
each  might  be  a  moral  theme  or  abstract  title  of  an 
Emersonian  essay.  Still  not  altogether  so ;  for  Em 
erson  is  trying  here  to  change  his  previous  method 
of  expression  and  to  employ  a  new  art-form. 

Regular  biographies  they  are  not,  but  decidedly 
irregular — the  immediate  and  often  capricious 
downflow  of  the  writer's  inspiration  stimulated  by 
certain  events  of  the  hero 's  life.  We  get  no  concep 
tion  of  Plato 's  work  as  an  ordered  whole ;  it  is  the 
Emersonian  Plato,  or  rather  the  Platonic  Emerson, 
whom  by  the  way  it  is  well  worth  while  to  know — 
if  not  so  much  for  Plato's  sake,  at  least  for  Emer 
son's.  Farthest-reaching  is  the  glimpse  which 
makes  Plato  "the  germ  of  that  Europe  we  know 
so  well,  in  its  long  history  of  arts  and  arms  .  .  . 
already  discernible  in  the  mind  of  Plato."  Equally 
profound  and  subtle  is  his  distinction  of  "free, 
active,  creative  Europe"  from  Asia,  which  is  an 
"immense  fate;"  moreover,  "if  the  East  loved  in 
finity,  the  West  (Europe)  delighted  in  boundaries," 
whereof  the  start  is  in  sculptured  Hellas  the  beau 
tiful,  divinely  bounded  in  Art. 

Thus  we  ride  on  flashes  of  lightning  through  this 
book,  often  with  dizzying,  intoxicating  headiness. 
Then  the  luminous  line  leaps  into  darkness  and 
drops  us  querying:  Where  are  we  now?  What 


REPRESENTATIVE  MEN.  329 

next?  For  instance,  after  reading  and  digesting 
that  last  thought  about  Orient  and  Europe,  we  beg : 
Tell  us  now,  dear  Emerson,  somewhat  of  that  third 
stage  in  the  sweep  of  the  World's  History,  the 
American  or  Occidental,  as  different  from  Europe 
as  the  latter  is  from  Asia,  which  new  offspring  of 
Time  was  long  ago  prophesied  by  Bishop  Berkeley, 
and  of  which  you  have  given  many  a  gleam  in  the 
Dial  and  elsewhere  during  your  former  Creative 
Epoch.  But  no  such  turn  seems  now  possible  with 
Emerson,  it  is  his  time  of  re-action  against  the 
West  and  his  new  sweep  toward  the  Eastern  and 
the  old. 

The  book  in  its  present  form  and  trend  was  first 
published  in  1850,  somewhere  about  the  middle  of 
his  Re-actionary  Epoch.  But  Emerson  had  for 
many  years  been  lecturing  on  the  lives  of  eminent 
men  in  various  places ;  during  1845  he  reports  him 
self  to  -Carlyle  as  giving  at  Boston  a  course  on  this 
same  group  of  Representative  Men,  with  the  ex 
ception  of  Goethe,  who  was  afterward  added,  and 
remains  in  the  book  a  somewhat  questionable  tail 
piece,  for  which  Emerson  himself  shows  lack  of 
sympathy,  and  we  think,  of  right  appreciation.  But 
in  this  case  Carlyle  and  also  Margaret  Fuller  doubt 
less  overwhelmed  his  self-determination.  The  whole 
work,  however,  was  the  product  of  a  long  evolution, 
probably  colored  variously  at  different  times,  but 
finally  taking-on  its  present  peculiar  tone  of  re 
action  as  its  true  fulfilment.  Since  he  gave  this 
course  also  in  England  (1847),  that  antique  land 


330      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

may  have  helped  to  ingrain  its  tinct  of  recoil  from 
West  to  East,  from  progress  to  regress  indicated 
primarily  in  the  choice  of  subject  as  well  in  its 
treatment. 

So  we  construe  this  representative  book  of  the 
representative  Man,  Emerson,  in  which  he  may  be 
said  to  represent  specially  his  representative  Epoch 
in  his  own  life-work.  That  is,  he  now  becomes 
aware  of  himself  on  this  side,  in  this  phase  of  his 
career,  and  writes  the  same  out  into  other  Great 
Men's  biographies.  He  is  himself  representative  in 
the  present  book.  Moreover,  all  these  Great  Men  are 
distant  from  him,  on  a  different  continent,  yea  in 
quite  another  world  from  his  own.  Such  is  his  pres 
ent  grand  act  of  self-estrangement,  needed,  in  fact 
imperative  as  the  course  of  life  itself,  though  he  has 
been  much  blamed  for  his  choice  by  critics,  even  by 
Carlyle,  who  wished  him  to  portray  some  American 
frontiersman  or  Indian.  But  Emerson  was  no 
Fennimore  Cooper.  He  mildly  says:  "I  wanted  a 
change  and  a. tonic;"  Europe  was  his  right  medi 
cine,  where  he  could  take  a  far  plunge  into  the  first 
fountains  of  that  Tradition,  against  whose  barriers 
he  finds  himself  breaking  his  head  here  in  Amer 
ica.  And  so  he  represents  not  only  a  stage  of  him 
self,  but  of  you  and  me,  yea  also  of  this  American 
people,  who  sorely  need  to  take  some  such  cultural 
dip  into  Europe's  and  even  the  Orient's  past,  in 
order  to  find  out  something  eternally  worth  while 
about  their  immediate  present  selves. 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  WOMAN.  33} 

II. 

THE  REPRESENTATIVE  WOMAN 

Scarcely  had  Emerson  finished  and  was  publish 
ing  his  Representative  Men  (1850),  when  Fate 
bore  down  on  him  with  a  new  yet  correlative  task: 
the  biography  of  the  Representative  "Woman,  an 
American  now,  Margaret  Fuller  Ossoli.  She  had 
been  a  central  figure  in  the  Emersonian  Renascence ; 
but  she,  too,  had  fled  to  Europe  at  the  end  of  its 
Creative  Epoch,  a  year  or  so  before  Emerson  set' sail 
thither.  On  her  return  as  soon  as  she  struck  the 
American  sea-coast,  she  perished  by  shipwreck. 

Her  peculiar  tragic  lot  made  a  strong  impression 
upon  Emerson,  so  that  he  resolved  to  tell  of  her 
story  what  he  knew.  Accordingly  he  has  devoted 
to  her  memory  what  we  may  call  a  book  in  the  col 
lection  known  as  the  Memoirs  of  Margaret  Fuller 
Ossoli.  It  is  longer  than  an  Essay,  more  detailed 
than  an  Address,  such  as  he  wrote  in  honor  of  his 
friend  Thoreau  or  of  his  Aunt  Mary.  Miss  Fuller, 
for  the  unmarried  maiden  it  was  whom  Emerson 
knew  and  dealt  with,  appeared  to  him  the  supreme 
Representative  Woman.  He  says,  Margaret  (so  he 
familiarly  calls  her)  "seemed  to  represent  them 
all,"  all  her  friends  and  all  her  environment.  The 
super-woman  of  his  world  he  deems  her,  "all  the 
art,  the  thought,  and  the  nobleness  of  New  Eng 
land  seemed  at  that  moment  related  to  her,  and  she 
to  it."  The  central  shining  figure  everywhere  she 
could  make  herself,  "who  brought  wit,  anecdotes. 


332      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

love-stories,  tragedies,  oracles  with  her — the  queen 
of  some  parliament  of  love,  who  carried  the  key  to 
all  confidences,  and  to  whom  every  question  had 
been  finally  ref erred. "  A  demonic  personality  she 
regarded  herself,  somewhat  after  the  pattern  of  her 
highest  literary  oracle,  Goethe,  whom  she  knew  bet 
ter  than  did  any  other  New  Englander,  better,  we 
think,  than  did  Carlyle,  for  she  actually  lived  on 
deeper  lines  that  poet's  genius. 

Significant  is  the  fact  that  she  circled  around 
Emerson  during  his  entire  Creative  Decennium, 
shooting  a  radiance  in  which  he  basked  with  every 
power  alert,  and  of  which  he  absorbed — how  much 
who  can  tell?  He  states:  "I  knew  her  intimately 
from  July,  1836,  till  August,  1846,  when  she  sailed 
for  Europe."  In  many  warm  grateful  sentences 
he  celebrates  her  transcendent  ability:  "The  day 
was  never  long  enough  to  exhaust  her  opulent  mem 
ory —  I  never  saw  her  without  surprise  at  her 
new  powers. ' '  Moreover  she  was  well  aware  of  her 
supremacy,  from  her  infancy  "she  idealized  her 
self  as  sovereign."  Overwhelming  loads  of  egotism 
she  would  dump  even  upon  friends,  saying  to  them 
coolly:  "I  now  know  all  the  people  worth  know 
ing  in  America,  and  I  find  no  intellect  comparable 
to  my  own."  So  Emerson  records  of  her  with  a 
smile  playing  in  his  words.  Thus  she  ranged  great 
Emerson  beneath  herself  to  his  face  with  all  the 
other  great  New  Englanders  of  her  time,  not  a  few 
of  whom  have  repaid  her  with  many  a  stinging  sar 
casm.  And  as  a  rule  women  were  her  quarry,  not 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  WOMAN.  333 

men;  she  was  the  representative  woman  among 
women,  not  a  little  defiant  of  tyrant  man  despite 
her  Oceanic  love-swells,  for  undoubtedly  she  had 
these  too. 

The  fact  is  that  Emerson  was  somewhat  afraid 
of  her  when  those  cyclonic  upheavals  of  emotion 
which  always  lay  seething  in  the  dark  recesses  of 
her  underworld,  would  break  up  and  overflow  and 
even  threaten,  as  we  may  judge  from  some  of  his 
intimations.  He  fully  recognized  that  hers  was  a 
stronger  personality  than  his  own,  against  which 
he  had  always  to  fortify  himself,  and  from  which 
at  times  his  familiar  warned  him  to  take  flight. 
Thus  he  confesses :  "I  foreboded  rash  and  painful 
crises,  and  had  a  feeling  as  if  a  voice  cried :  Stand 
from  under  I77  In  such  manner  Emerson  distinctly 
intimates  his  peril,  and  once  says  openly  that  he 
knows  much  more  than  he  will  tell.  So  he  com 
pels  his  reader  to  suspect  according  to  ability. 

As  the  female  Prometheus  (so  she  construes  her 
self  in  a  certain  mood)  of  Emerson's  life,  she  ap 
pears  to  have  been  the  successor  of  his  Titanic 
Aunt  Mary  Moody  Emerson.  But  her  power  over 
him  faded  not  by  absence;  he  seems  to  have  cher 
ished  some  plan  for  her  activity  after  her  return. 
The  news  of  her  death  drew  from  him  this  sad  note  : 
"I  have  lost  in  her  my  audience,  and  I  hurry  now 
to  my  work  admonished  that  I  have  a  few  days 
left."  So  interwound  was  his  soul  with  hers  that 
he  appeared  for  a  while  to  feel  that  her  tragic  fate 
prefigured  his  own. 


334      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

Margaret  Fuller  remained  long  the  ideal  of  the 
more  aspiring  and  talented  women  of  Yankeeland, 
and  her  influence  has  by  no  means  vanished  today. 
To  many  she  i&  still  the  Representative  Woman,  as 
pedestaled  by  Emerson. 

III. 

THE  REPRESENTATIVE  NATION 

Such  may  be  taken  as  the  deeper  underlying  des 
ignation  of  the  book  whose  title-page  reads  English 
Traits.  This  Representative  Nation,  however,  is 
not  his  own  America,  but  his  ancestral  home-folk, 
the  English.  Herein  we  are  to  mark  another  stage 
of  his  re-action,  the  national ;  he  drops  back  with  ad 
miration  and  love  to  his  original  stock.  Moreover 
we  should  note  him  turning  away  from  the  Present, 
which  he  had  so  strongly  emphasized  in  the  forego 
ing  Epoch,  to  the  Past,  to  Tradition  incorporate  in 
a  whole  people — in  their  outer  customs  as  well  as 
their  inner  consciousness. 

England,  then,  is  the  lofty  theme,  her  spiritual 
portrait  is  what  he  proposes  to  paint ;  or,  since  he  is 
in  the  biographic  mood  during  this  Decennium,  he 
will  top  it  out  by  writing  the  biography  of  the  Great 
Nation,  the  greatest  on  the  globe  as  he  declares. 
Hitherto  he  has  given  us  only  the  lives  of  Great 
Individuals,  now  he  will  rise  to  the  portrayal  of  the 
total  life  of  a  people,  and  that  the  most  excellent. 
For  he  sums  up  tersely  the  result  in  his  last  section : 
"England  is  the  best  of  nations."  Such  is  the  con- 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  NATION.  335 

centrated  essence  of  his  two  visits  as  well  as  of  life 
long  intimate  studies.  He  fails  not  to  make  the  con 
trast  with  his  own  country:  "The  American  sys 
tem  is  more  democratic,  more  humane;  yet  the 
American  people  do  not  yield  better  or -more  able 
men,  or  more  inventions,  or  books  or  benefits  than 
the  English" — yea,  it  is  really  behindhand  just  in 
these  excellences  as  well  as  otherwise,  says  Emer 
son  often  pointedly.  "We  prefer  one  Shakespeare 
to  a  million  foolish  democrats, ' '  affirms  the  literary 
aristocrat,  re-directing  a  famous  thunderbolt  of  his 
friend,  hero-worshiping  Carlyle. 

Surely,  then,  England  is  this  Earth's  Repre 
sentative  Nation,  the  best  producer  of  the  best, 
verily  the  greatest  creator  of  Representative  Men, 
whom  we  have  considered  apart  and  singly  hitherto. 
But  now  we  must  get  back  to  their  source;  hence 
Emerson  proclaims :  "No  one  man  and  no  few  men 
can  represent  them — it  is  a  people  of  myriad  per 
sonalities."  So  Emerson  comes  home  impressed 
with  the  Great  Nation  supereminent  over  and  in 
deed  productive  of  Great  Individuals,-  to  whom 
singly  his  eye  hitherto  has  been  limited.  It  is  for 
him  a  great  new  outreach,  which  will  have  its  effect 
upon  him  when  he  gets  back  to  his  own  Nation, 
rather  neglected  in  his  view  heretofore. 

This  book,  English  Traits,  was  published  in  1856, 
and  thus  concludes  the  present  Decennium,  through 
the  whole  of  which  it  is  fermenting. and  maturing. 
Indeed  it  goes  back  farther  according  to  Emerson 's 
retrospective  statements:  "I  have  been  twice  in 


336      RALPH  WAL'DO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

England/'  first  in  1833,  whereof  he  gives  here  some 
account;  then  he  takes  up  his  "second  visit  to  Eng 
land  in  1847,"  which  furnishes  the  main  content  of 
the  book.  Thus  the  first  germ  of  the  work  is  thrown 
back  some- twenty-three  years  from  the  date  of  pub 
lication.  Strictly,  however,  it  belongs  to  this  Re 
actionary  Epoch  of  the  author's  life.  It  shows  de 
cisively  his  estrangement  from  his  own  people  and 
the  backflow  to  his  ancestral  land.  Undoubtedly 
there  is  often  sharp  criticism  of  the  English,  but 
they  always  come  out  on  top.  Their  power  of  su 
perb  man-building  is  what  he  justly  celebrates. 
And  the  Nation  does  it — which  view  is  an  impor 
tant  point  in  the  evolution  of  Emerson,  since. he  is 
now  getting  to  see  associated  Man  in  the  institution, 
not  merely  the  individual  man.  We  may  forecast 
that  he  will  yet  come  round  to  his  own  Nation. 

A  very  appreciative  book  is  the  English  Traits, 
written  with  much  epigrammatic  point,  and  fre 
quent  meteoric  sentences  blazing  across  its  sky. 
Still  we  cannot  help  noting  that  the  author  betray 
ing  his  own- limitation,  has  left  out  England's  great 
est,  most  universal  trait :  she  has  been  the  chief  in 
stitution-maker  to  the  world  in  these  recent  cen 
turies.  Especially  of  the  State,  of  the  political  in 
stitution  she  has  furnished  the  working  model  to 
all  striving,  freedom-pursuing  peoples.  The  Eng 
lish  method  of  governing  men,  English  Law  and 
Constitution,  are  still  going  the  round  of  the  Earth, 
and  have  pushed  far  beyond  her  territorial  sover 
eignty,  vast  as  it  is.  This  to  our  mind,  is  the  grea* 


THE  REPRESENTATIVE  NATION.  337 

cst  thing  that  England  has  done.  But  Emerson, 
bonded  to  his  thought's  institutional  limit,  has  lit 
tle  sense  for  such  a  national  characteristic.  It  is 
true  that  he  knows  of  Runny mede  and  Magna 
Charta ;  but  fully  to  realize  them  and  their  place  in 
the  World's  History  is  another  matter.  Emerson, 
indeed,  remembers  Britain  "  as  an  island  famous  for 
immortal  laws,  for  the  announcements  of  original 
right,  which  make  the  stone  tables  of  liberty"  (Ch. 
XVIII).  But  this  remains  to  him  rather  an  ex 
ternal  fact  than  a  profoundly  assimilated  convic 
tion.  The  Representative  Nation  is  to  prove  itself 
not  only  the  builder  of  men,  but  the  builder  of  in 
stitutions,  which  associate  men  for  the  supreme  goal 
of  humanity,  especially  associate  men  unto  the  end 
of  freedom. 

Here,  then,  lies  for  us  the  missing  part  of  this 
book,  yea  the  missing  part  of  Emerson  himself — a 
fact  which  we  have  elsewhere  often  noticed.  The 
American  political  fabric  is  quite  as  alien  to  him  as 
is  the  English.  Indeed  the  whole  institutional 
world  is  or  has  been  not  only  a  stranger  to  Emerson 
but  a  downright  goblin,  which  he  has  sought  to  ban 
from  himself  and  indeed  from  existence.  Still  we 
believe  that  he  is  now  beginning  to  get  a  glimpse  of 
a  new  aspect  of  this  subject.  There  are  hints  of  a 
re-action  in  this  otherwise  Re-actionary  Epoch 
against  his  former  anti-social  trend.  But  they  are 
as  yet  largely  unconscious,  we  have  to  dig  for  them ; 
just  as  at  present  in  his  separative  title,  English 
Traits,  we  seek  out  the  connecting  under-current 


338     RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

which  not  only  unifies  his  book  within  itself,  but 
also  with  all  his  other  works  of  the  present  Decen- 
nium. 

Having  thus  set  forth  in  writ  three  positive  forms 
of  Representation,  he  turns  to  the  negative  Repre 
sentative  Man  and  People,  finding  them  in  one  of 
his  countrymen  and  in  his  country. 

IV. 

THE  REPRESENTATIVE  AMERICAN 

Daniel  Webster  more  than  any  other  American 
was  Emerson's  ideal  of  the  Great  Man,  during 
youth  and  also  middle  age.  It  is  true  that  the  rad 
ical  Transcendentalist  became  aware  of  the  chasm 
between  his  consciousness  and  that  of  the  conserva 
tive  Statesman;  still  across  the  ever  widening  and 
deepening  rift  which  parted  them,  he  gazed  with 
admiration  at  the  grandiose  form  of  the  greatest 
New  Englander  of  the  time.  Through  the  whole 
line  of  Emerson's  Journals  from  the  first  volume 
rises  at  intervals  Webster's  imposing  figure  be  writ 
with  rapturous  comments.  As  an  instance,  we  may 
cite  his  description  of  Webster  entering  incident 
ally  the  audience  at  Cambridge  while  Edward  Ev 
erett  was  making  an  address:  "The  house  shook 
with  new  and  prolonged  applause,  and  Everett  sat 
down,  and  the  old  Titanic  Earth-Son  was  alone 
seen."  (Journals,  Vol.  VII,  p.  167.)  Such  was 
the  overawing  effect  upon  Emerson  at  least.  Later 
when  he  was  wholly  estranged  from  his  hero,  he 


THE  REPRENSENTATIVE  AMERICAN.       ;}39 

says:  "I  remember  his  appearance  at  Bunker  Hill. 
There  was  the  Monument  and  here  was  Webster — 
and  the  whole  occasion  was  answered  by  his  pres 
ence.  His  splendid  wrath  when  his  eyes  became 
lamps,  was  the  wrath  of  the  fact  and  the  cause  he 
stood  for." 

But  in  the  course  of  years  came  the  Compromise 
of  1850  enacting  its  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  which  Em 
erson  deemed  the  quintessential  sin  of  the  ages.  Al 
though  the  measure  was  introduced  by  Clay  and 
bears  his  name,  still  Webster  was  held  accountable 
for  it  by  New  England,  and  especially  by  Emerson. 
Hence  we  read  this  scathing  insertion  (Journals, 
VIII,  p.  216)  :  "Webster  truly  represents  the 
American  people  just  as  they  are,  with  their  vast 
material  interests,  materialized  intellect  and  low 
morals.  Heretofore  their  Great  Men  who  have  led 
them  have  been  better  than  they,  as  Washington, 
Hamilton,  Madison.  But  Webster's  absence  of 
moral  faculty  is  degrading  to  the  country.  Of  this 
fatal  defect,  of  course,  Webster  himself  has  no  per 
ception."  Really  he  must  be  worse  than  his  coun 
try  if  he  can  so  degrade  it  from  what  it  was.  Em 
erson  strongly  echoed  the  mighty  damnation  of 
Whittier's  Ichdbod,  which  catches  the  trumpet- 
voice  of  the  avenging  angel  as  it  proclaims  the  Last 
Judgment  to  the  guilty  sinner. 

Here,  then,  is  declared  Emerson's  supreme  es 
trangement  from  his  Hero  and  from  his  Nation. 
Both  he  damns  to  eternal  infamy.  This  may  well 
be  regarded  the  extreme  point  of  his  reaction 


340     RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

against  his  environing  world,  his  turn  from-  its 
leading  man  and  its  leading  institution.  Previously 
he  had  reacted  against  Transcendentalism  and  took 
flight  to  Europe ;  also  he  communed  with  her  Rep 
resentative  Men,  and  wrote  about  them  his  repre 
sentative  book.  But  he  has  returned  to  America, 
and  what  does  he  find?  His  Representative  Man 
has  become  the  universal  curse  of  mankind,  having 
authorized  "the  most  detestable  law  that  was  ever 
enacted  by  a  civilized  state. ' ' 

Two  documents  we  may  select  for  this  peculiar 
Emersonian  turn,  which  brings  to  a  close  the  pres 
ent  Reactionary  Decennium.  These  are  the  two 
speeches  on  The  Fugitive  Slave  Law  which  are  quite 
different  in  style  from  his  former  addresses.  Less 
discursively  sentential,  more  unified,  they  radiate 
more  warmth  but  less  metaphor;  not  so  much  the 
speaker's  intellectual  as  his  emotional  nature  now 
wells  up  to  the  surface  and  overflows  his  discourse. 

1.  Address  at  Concord,  May,  1851.  He  notices 
the  great  change  brought  about  by  the  Compromise 
of  1850.  ' '  The  last  year  has  forced  us  all  into  pol 
itics,  and  made  it  a  paramount  duty  to  seek  what 
it  is  often  a  duty  to  shun."  That  marks  the  Emer 
son  of  the  past,  his  aloofness  from  political  activ 
ity.  The  State  as  an  institution  he  never  liked, 
never  really  believed  in,  but  now  it  makes  itself  felt 
with  a  new,  yea  vengeful  power.  No  wonder  he 
cries  out :  "I  have  a  new  experience. ' '  What  is  it ? 
That  world  which  he  has  always  tossed  aside  with 
some  contempt  theoretically  and  practically,  the 


THE  REPRENSENTATIVE  AMERICAN.       341 

regnant  social  order  of  man,  is  now  brought  home 
to  him  with  a  retributive  violence.  "I  wake  in  the 
morning  with  a  painful  sensation,  which  I  carry 
about  all  day,"  caused  by  the  conduct  of  his  own 
commonwealth  Massachusetts  as  well  as  of  the  Na 
tion.  " There  is  infamy  in  the  air,"  an  altogether 
novel  sensation  for  him.  So  he  describes  a  kind  of 
world-pain  which  creeps  snakily  through  all  his 
hours.  The  Higher  Law,  which  he  has  hitherto  so 
easily  taken  for  granted,  has  indeed  met  its  supreme 
challenge,  and  has  now  to  fight  for  its  very  exist 
ence.  So  he  turns  over  the  whole  problem  anew, 
and  even  cites  legal  authorities — a  very  unusual 
thing  in  his  prelections. 

But  the  bitterest  pill,  the  most  heart-wrenching 
fact  is  the  part  of  Daniel  Webster  in  the  ignomini 
ous  business.  Emerson  writhes  at  the  reminiscence  : 
"The  fairest  American  fame  ends  in  this  filthy 
law. ' '  He  looks  backward  and  tells  with  sorrowful 
fervor  how  much  he  has  enjoyed  Webster's  "fame 
in  the  past."  He  was  the  one  eminent  American 
of  our  time  whom  we  could  produce  "as  a  finished 
work  of  Nature. ' '  Truly  our  hero,  our  Represent 
ative  Man;  his  was  the  best  head  in  Congress,  yea 
in  the  land,  as  well  as  the  most  eloquent  tongue. 
Still  Emerson  sets  sharply  this  limit  upon  him : 
'  *  Mr.  Webster  is  a  man  who  lives  by  his  memory,  a 
man  of  the  past."  That  is  it,  the  Emersonian 
curse,  tradition;  such  is  the  all-corrupting  Web- 
sterian  malady.  "He  praises  a  past  Adams  and 


342      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

Jefferson,  but  a  present  Adams  and  Jefferson  he 
would  denounce.'' 

Moreover  dim  notes  of  prophecy  drop  from  the 
speaker's  lips.  He  darkly  forecasts:  "The  Neme 
sis  works  underneath  again,  and  draws  us  on  to 
our  undoing;"  so  will  it  be  with  Daniel  Webster; 
just  wait.  Accordingly  we  look  out  for  the  fulfil 
ment  in  the  second  discourse  delivered  nearly  three 
years  later. 

2.  Address  at  New  York  City,  March  7,  1854. 
The  date  is  ominous,  being  the  fourth  anniversary 
of  Webster's  Compromise  Speech  of  March  7,  1850. 
In  the  meantime  the  great  orator,  "the  Titanic 
Earth-son,"  has  passed  off  the  stage  of  life,  the 
most  colossally  tragic  American  character  of  his 
age.  He  had  been  rejected  by  his  city,  by  his  sec 
tion,  by  his  party  both  in  the  North  and  in  the 
South.  The  final  stroke  of  Fate  was  the  utter  de 
feat  of  his  last  Presidential  hope  by  the  Whig  Con 
vention  at  Baltimore  in  1852.  Not  long  afterwards 
death  smote  him,  it  may  be  said,  with  the  whole 
American  people  looking  on  his  fall  at  the  end  of 
a  grand  drama  of  Nemesis,  as  Emerson  would  in 
terpret  it.  And  what  has  happened  to  Webster,  the 
fallen  mightiest,  is  certain  to  happen  to  slavery 
itself:  "slowly,  slowly  the  Avenger  comes,  but  he 
comes  surely. " 

This  address  of  Emerson  marks  an  epochal  transi 
tion  in  his  life,  the  movement  out  of  his  Re-action- 
ary  Decennium  into  a  new  stage.  He  mentions 
this  change  at  the  opening  of  his  speech;  he  has 


THE  REPRENSENTATIVE  AMERICAN.       34.3 

hitherto  shunned  public  questions,  as  no  proper 
part  of  his  task,  which  has  been  confined  "to  the 
well-being  of  students  or  scholars. "  But  such 
aloofness  must  give  way  in  the  present  crisis.  Till 
the  passage  of  this  Fugitive  Slave  Act,  he  was  not 
aware  of  ' '  suffering  any  inconvenience  from  Amer 
ican  Slavery;"  but  now  it  intrudes  through  his 
very  door,  and  thrusts  itself  even  into  his  con 
science  whose  dictates  it  challenges  in  his  soul's  own 
home.  Thus  a  new  and  intense  conflict  has  burst 
forth  right  in  his  Holy  of  Holies :  that  between  the 
enacted  Law  and  Constitution  on  the  one  hand 
and  on  the  other  the  divine  efflux  from  above  into 
his  conviction.  It  will  not  be  hard  to  foretell  which 
side  in  this  battle  Emerson  will  take,  if  we  may  now 
judge  of  him  by  his  past. 

Not  only  will  he  henceforth  obey  the  Higher  God- 
born  Law  against  the  Lower  man-made  Law,  but  he 
will  proclaim  it,  and  propagate  it  as  his  prime 
duty.  Thus  that  former  Propagation  of  doctrinal 
Transcendentalism,  which  was  so  marked  in  the 
former  Creative  Epoch,  and  then  lapsed  so  strik 
ingly  in  the  present  Re-actionary  Epoch,  is  next 
to  be  taken  up  in  a  new  shape  and  to  become  one  of 
Emerson's  main  activities.  From  theory  to  prac 
tice  will  be  the  dominant  sweep,  and  Emerson  will 
stress  the  doer  more  than  the  writer,  whose  literary 
productivity  now  falls  decidedly  into  the  back 
ground. 


CHAPTER  SIXTH 

THE  PRACTICAL  DECENNIUM  (1855-1865) 

Let  it  be  said  again  with  increased  stress,  that 
Emerson  now  passes  from  theory  to  practice, 
from  an  activity  chiefly  intellectual  to  his  direct 
grapple  with  the  real  world  at  present  driving  in 
upon  him  and  challenging  him  to  open  public  com 
bat.  The  change  was  not  agreeable  to  him,  as  he 
intimates;  still  he  had  to  compass  it,  since  it  was 
in  fact  the  next  great  stage  in  his  life's  unfolding, 
which  he  could  not  shun  without  losing  his  career. 
Thus  he  moves  into  what  we  may  label  his  Prac 
tical  Decennium,  a  new  Epoch,  and  the  concluding 
one,  of  his  long  Second  Period  which  shows  all 
through  its  course  a  deep  continued  estrangement 
from  his  environing  world,  especially  from  its  in 
stitutional  element. 

Still,  as  compared  with  the  preceding  Epoch, 
the  present  one  marks  a  stage  of  recovery — a  res 
toration  out  of  his  re-actionary  time  through  pub 
lic  activity,  which  continues  to  broaden  and 
deepen  till  its  close.  Hitherto,  as  he  declares,  he 
has  held  aloof  from  "public  questions,"  and  has 
clung  to  the  intellectual  tasks  of  "the  scholar." 
However  he  is  still  in  a  mood  of  protest  especially 
against  the  political  order,  out  of  which  protest 
he  is  slowly  to  evolve  during  the  present  Decen- 

344 


THE  PRACTICAL  DECENNIUM.  345 

nium,  along  with  the  painful  but  healing  evolu 
tion  of  the  Nation  itself.  Accordingly  the  pres 
ent  Epoch  sweeps  toward  an  institutional  recovery 
within  the  man  and  outside  him  in  the  State. 
From  this  point  of  view,  which  is  fundamental,  his 
chief  interest  now  circles  about  the  American  Na 
tion  ;  though  at  first  he  turns  bitterly  negative  and 
hostile,  he  unfolds  out  of  that  attitude,  mainly 
through  the  all-testing  experiences  of  the  Civil 
War,  into  a  positive,  reconciled  relation  to  his  peo 
ple  and  their  fulfilment.  That  is,  from  being 
strongly  anti-national  at  the  start  of  this  Epoch, 
he  becomes  strongly  pro-national  at  its  close. 

I.  Here  at  the  beginning  let  us  make  a  brief 
survey  of  the  time-boundaries  of  this  Epoch,  which 
we  again  confine  to  ten  years.  But  they  now  lie 
between  the  dates  1855  and  1865.  To  be  sure  the 
present  Decennium  has  tentacles  pushing  forth  be 
fore  and  after  these  dates,  it  has  lines  of  prelude 
as  well  as  of  epilogue. 

Already  we  have  noted  Emerson  marking  em 
phatically  his  time  of  transition  in  his  speech  of 
March  7,  1854.  But  we  hear  of  him  starting  his 
active  anti-slavery  crusade  in  1855.  He  had  long 
been  theoretically  an  opponent  of  slavery,  flinging 
down  an  occasional  word  and  deed  from  his  Hermi 
tage.  But  we  have  observed  how  he  got  to  disliking 
and  even  satirizing  the  whole  horde  of  New  Eng 
land  reformers,  including  the  abolitionists.  Now, 
however,  he  is  resolved  to  act  in  the  great  practical 
movement  of  the  time,  yea  to  devote  his  life  chiefly, 


346      RALPH  WAI  DO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

though  not  wholly,  to  action,  to  war,  instead  of 
peaceful  contemplation.  We  hold  that  here  lies  his 
grand  work  of  self-redemption  from  his  previous 
partial  paralysis  both  of  intellect  and  will.  We  may 
well  recall  what  was  doing  in  the  Nation  about  this 
time :  Enforcements  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law, 
the  Repeal  of  the  Missouri  .Compromise  and  the  uni 
versal  uproar  in  consequence,  the  Kansas  conflict, 
which  started  in  1855  and  kept  stirring  up  bojh  the 
North  and  the  South — Massachusetts  being  specially 
active  through  her  Emigrant  Aid  Society.  Cer 
tainly  the  political  hubbub  was  enough  to  drive  Em 
erson  and  every  other  scholar  out  of  his  seclusion 
into  the  fighting  ranks.  The  great  national  align 
ment  for  the  coming  struggle  was  taking  place,  and 
Emerson  volunteered. 

But  how  long  did  this  Emersonian  war  last  ?  It 
closed  with  Appomattox,  with  1865,  the  year  of  na 
tional  victory  and  restored  supremacy  of  the  Union. 
Through  this  outcome  Emerson  felt  himself  also  re 
stored  to  his  Nation  as  never  before  in  his  whole 
life,  during  which  he  quite  from  his  youth  had  been 
indifferent,  if  not  hostile,  to  the  central  government, 
constructed  and  dominated  as  it  was  by  Southern 
ers.  In  fact  we  shall  find  that  his  reconciliation 
runs  deeper,  and  will  include  not  the  State  alone, 
but  the  whole  institutional  world  against  which  has 
been  launched  his  deep  and  abiding  protest,  This 
protest,  we  recollect,  reaches  back  to  his  early 
church-conflict,  and  furnishes  the  spur  and  the 


THE  PRACTICAL  DECENNIUM.  347 

ground-work  of  his  supreme  literary  achievement 
during  his  Creative  Decennium. 

II.  Thus  about  the  year  1855  Emerson  changes 
or  has  changed  from  his  hitherto  passive,  local, 
theoretical  resistance  ending  in  final  practical  sub 
mission,  and  now  he  turns  his  theory  into  an  active 
hostility  against  national  authority.  He  will  em 
ploy  both  word  and  deed.  To  be  sure,  he  can  not 
wholly  abandon  his  former  literary  and  speculative 
interests,  but  they  will  become  subordinate,  yea, 
largely  a  repetition  of  his  former  stages,  often  of 
his  former  sentences  as  set  down  in  his  Diary.  The 
Fugitive  Slave  Law,  for  instance,  he  will  not  only 
nullify  passively,  but  he  will  challenge  it  directly 
in  actual  combat  with  executive  officials.  It  was 
indeed  a  "nasty  law,"  though  upheld  by  Webster 
and  the  great  constitutional  lawyers  of  the  Senate. 
But  Emerson  goes  further,  a  good  deal  further:  he 
assails  the  Judiciary  for  not  taking  the  law  into 
their  hands  and  making  it  what  it  ought  to  be. 
Thus  Emerson  would  have  the  judge  of  the  law  to 
be  its  maker,  and  to  usurp  the  place  of  the  legis 
lator.  In  this  way  the  judge  would  be  an  absolute 
monarch,  exercising  legislative,  judicial,  and  exec 
utive  functions.  Nothing  could  be  mere  un-Amer 
ican,  if  we  hold  by  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States. 

Let  us  listen  to  him  making  a  speech  January  26, 
1855.  He  declares  that  "Justice  is  poisoned  at  the 
fountain,"  since  the  Judge  insists  upon  enforcing 
not  the  Moral  Law  of  his  own  conscience  but  the  En- 


348      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

acted  Law  of  the  Nation.  Undoubtedly  here  is 
called  up  the  great  spiritual  collision  of  the  Epoch, 
that  between  the  Moral  and  the  Institutional,  of 
which  two  sides  Emerson  at  present  chooses  uncon 
ditionally  the  first,  in  accord  with  his  long  cherished 
doctrine  of  the  final  authority  of  the  Moral  Senti 
ment  in  every  individual  conscience.  But  let  us  not 
forget  that  heretofore  this  doctrine  was  held  by  him 
simply  in  theory ;  if  a  clash  came  through  it  in  prac 
tical  life,  he  shunned  the  fight,  paid  his  taxes  legal 
but  immoral,  kept  his  bankstock  with  its  interest  of 
some  twelve  hundred  dollars  and  more  a  year — a 
great  social  wrong  in  his  conviction,  but  an  indis 
pensable  help  for  uttering  that  conviction.  Thus 
he  fought  sin  by  means  of  his  own  sinning.  Acqui 
esce  in  his  own  guilt  he  might  formerly,  but  he  will 
do  it  no  longer.  Such  is  his  present  new  resolu 
tion  starting  another  Epoch,  and  a  new  Emerson. 

In  the  same  speech  he  amplifies  the  national  sit 
uation  as  regards  the  Judiciary :  ' '  In  our  Northern 
States  no  judge  appeared  of  sufficient  character 
and  intellect  to  ask,  not  whether  the  slave  law  was 
constitutional  but  whether  it  was  right."  Again 
in  this  sentence  we  hear  the  furiously  battling  dual 
ism  of  the  time  evoked  by  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act : 
Shall  we  obey  Conscience  or  the  Constitution  ?  And 
which  shall  the  judicial  tribunal  follow?  Emerson 
gives  his  decisive  answer  to  the  otherwise  crushing 
problem:  "The  first  duty  of  a  judge  was  to  read 
the.  law.  in  accordance  with  equity,  and  if  it  jarred 
with  equity,  to  disoAvn  the  law. "  (Cited  in  Cabot's 


THE  PRACTICAL  DECENNIUM.  349 

Emerson  II,  p.  598.)  In  the  most  literal  practical 
sense,  he  now  becomes  a  real  Antinomian,  to  which 
doctrine  he  always  had  a  tendency,  by  his  own  con 
fession. 

Such  is  the  Emersonian  solution  of  the  might}' 
national  conflict  ever  getting  more  intense  during 
this  Epoch  till  it  finally  breaks  out  into  open  war. 
Many  were  the  provocations  on  both  sides  during 
these  tumultuous  years;  we  find  Emerson  echoing 
them  in  speech  and  act.  He,  with  the  whole  coun 
try  and  especially  New  England,  was  deeply  stirred 
by  the  assault  on  Senator  Sumner  in  the  Federal 
Senate  chamber  (May,  1856).  Upon  this  subject 
he  makes  a  warm  speech  to  his  fellow-citizens  of 
Concord,  and  states  in  fresh  form  the  conflict :  "I 
do  not  see  how  a  barbarous  community  and  a  civil 
ized  community  can  form  one  State. ' '  Here  is  Lin 
coln  's  famous  "House  divided  against  itself" — the 
present  ever-rasping  dualism  of  our  two-principled 
Nation.  But  Emerson  adds :  "I  think  we  must  get 
rid  of  slavery  or  get  rid  of  freedom."  This  again 
recalls  Lincoln 's  utterance  : ' '  This  Union  cannot  en 
dure  half-slave  half-free,  it  will  become  all  one  thing 
or  all  the  other."  Thus  we  behold  Emerson  pro 
foundly  sharing-in  and  expressing  the  scission  of 
the  Nation. 

The  outcries  of  ' '  bleeding  Kansas ' '  also  drove  him 
to  a  sympathetic  speech  (September,  1856)  in 
which  he  proclaims  with  emphasis  that  "every  im 
moral  statute  is  void."  But  who  is  to  decide? 
Then  he  asks:  "What  are  the  results  of  Law  and 


350      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

Union  ? ' '  His  answer  runs  that ' '  there  is  no  Union 
and  no  Law/7  both  have  become  self -destroying. 
That  would  seem  to  be  a  condition  approaching  so 
cial  dissolution ;  but  it  is  what  he  seems  to  long  for, 
saying  "I  am  glad  that  the  terror  at  disunion  and 
anarchy  is  disappearing,"  and  he  claims  history 
to  be  on  his  side:  " Massachusetts  in  its  heroic  day 
had  no  government,  was  an  anarchy,"  in  which 
' '  every  man  was  his  own  governor. ' '  That  is,  when 
the  tea  was  thrown  overboard  and  the  Concord  shot 
was  fired.  Thus  he  dissolves  all  society  back  into 
its  constituent  atoms  without  association.  It  would 
appear  that  the  anti-institutional  Emerson  is  about 
to  see  his  long-agone  dream  realized  in  "the  New 
Revolution  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,"  which  is 
destined  to  be  far  vaster  and  more  glorious  than  the 
old  American  Revolution.  Nor  does  he  propose  to 
stop  with  mere  glorifying  words,  for  his  peroration 
advises  quick,  strong  deeds  in  a  flaming  appeal 
which  certainly  sounds  revolutionary:  "Fellow 
citizens,  in  these  times  full  of  the  fate  of  the  Re 
public,  I  think  the  towns  should  hold  town  meet 
ings,  and  resolve  themselves  into  Committees  of 
Safety,  go  into  permanent  sessions 
stop  every  American  about  to  leave  the  coun 
try."  Thus  we  seem  to  behold  Emerson  turning 
Jacobin  orator  and  addressing  his  Club  of  Revolu 
tionaries,  as  if  he  were  re-enacting  some  vivid 
Parisian  scene  out  of  his  friend  Carlyle's  French 
History,  which  must  have  become  very  real  to  him 
during  these  passionate  months. 


THE  PRACTICAL  DECENNIUM.  .351 

Rapidly,  fiercely  our  mild-mannered,  excess- 
shunning  Emerson  appears  to  be  turning  about  to 
a  practical  revolutionist,  of  course  as  yet  unbloody. 
Still  he  brushes  the  sanguinary  side  of  the  move 
ment.  In  1857  John  Brown,  most  famous  and  gori 
est  of  tke  million  John  Browns,  came  to  Concord 
and  gave  a  lecture  which  urged  the  sending  of  men 
and  arms  to  settlers  in  Kansas,  where  already  the 
battle-line  of  the  opening  Ten  Years'  War  had  been 
drawn  in  human  crimson.  Emerson  records  that 
John  Brown  in  said  speech  ' t  gave  a  good  account  of 
himself  to  a  meeting  of  citizens,"  and  we  are  em 
phatically  told  that  "one  of  his  best  points  was  the 
folly  of  the  peace  party  in  Kansas,  who  believed 
that  their  strength  lay  in  the  greatness  of  their 
wrongs,  and  so  discountenanced  resistance."  Our 
interest  is  not  that  John  Brown  uttered  this  war 
like  note — such  we  would  expect  from  him— but 
that  Emerson  selects  it  and  emphasizes  it,  indicat 
ing  his  present  militant  practical  tendency.  Brown 
later  complained  of  the  elegant  rhetorical  Aboli 
tionists  of  Boston  that  they  were  all  talk  and  no 
action.  But  Emerson  seems  advancing  toward  the 
deed;  so  is  the  Nation,  could  he  but  see  the  inner 
working  of  its  spirit;  thus  he  is  representative  of 
his  time  even  if  unconscious  of  the  fact.  For  the 
American  people,  during  these  Kansas  years  were 
on  both  sides  steadily  making  up  their  minds  to 
fight,  but  the  thing  must  be  done  in  the  right  way 
in  the  fullness  of  time. 

It  is  declared  that  Emerson  knew    nothing     of 


352-     RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

John  Brown's  raid  into  Virginia,  which  took  place 
two  years  later.  Still  he  had  met  in  the  old  Puri 
tan  the  heroic  soul  of  his  present  tendency — the 
man  who  was  ready  to  assail  in  open  fight  the  In 
stitutional,  and  die  for  the  Moral,  if  need  be.  In  a 
lecture  delivered  at  Boston  (November,  1859), 
while  Brown  was  in  a  Virginia  jail,  having  been 
condemned  to  death  for  his  deed,  Emerson  wreathes 
one  of  his  golden  crowns  and  sets  it  triumphantly 
on  his  hero's  brow,  canonizing  him  as  "that  new 
saint  than  whom  none  purer  or  more  brave  was 
ever  led  by  love  of  man  into  conflict  and  death — 
the  new  saint  awaiting  his  martyrdom,  and  who  if 
he  shall  suffer,  will  make  the  gallows  glorious  like 
the  cross. ' '  Thus  Brown  is  hallowed  and  more : 
his  suffering  and  death  will  make  him  the  modern 
Christ,  and  alongside  the  cross  of  Christendom  will 
be  borne  the  new  holy  symbol,  the  gallows  of  a  uni 
versal  '  John-Browndom. 

Such  we  may  take  as  the  extreme  of  Emerson's 
anarchic  moralism,  certainly  destructive  of  Law 
and  Constitution.  These,  we  may  grant,  are  seri 
ously  defective,  and  ought  to  be  changed ;  but  is 
this  the  right  way  to  change  them — the  way  of 
John  Brown?  Decisively  the  American  People — 
the  party  most  deeply  concerned — said  No  a  few 
years  later.  But  the  interesting  biographic  fact 
for  us  is  that  Emerson  now  shouting  Yes,  also  said 
No  a  few  years  later — said  it  in  a  number  of  ways, 
whereof  the  reckoning  will  be  made  hereafter  when 
the  time  arrives.  But  it  is  proper  at  present  to  set 


THE  PRACTICAL  DECENNIUM, 


down  this  one  significant  point:  Emerson  publish 
ing  the  present  Address  after  the  Civil  War  in  his 
book  called  Society  and  Solitude  (see  Essay  en 
titled  Courage)  omitted  the  foregoing  apotheosis  of 
John  Brown,  and  pruned  the  daring  passage  down 
to  a  very  conciliatory  allusion,  in  which  he  appears 
to  praise  Governor  Wise  and  the  Virginians  quite 
as  he  once  did  his  former  hero.  What  has  brought 
about  such  a  decisive  change  of  speech  in  Emerson 
indicative  of  a  fresh  spiritual  transformation  ?  Be 
tween  the  dates  of  these  two  utterances,  say  between 
1860  and  1870,  he  has  indeed  undergone  a  great 
new  experience,  we  believe,  the  greatest  of  his  life. 
He  has  made  the  turn  from  his  anti-institutional  to 
his  pro-institutional  stage,  and  therewith  has  quite 
reversed  the  trend  of  his  whole  previous  career. 
Now,  if  we  were  to  select  the  two  individuals  who 
may  be  taken  as  the  best  representatives  of  this 
change  not  only  in  Emerson  but  in  the  time,  we 
would  name  John  Brown  and  Abraham  Lincoln. 
We  shall  see  Emerson  passing  from  Brown  to  Lin 
coln  during  this  Decennium. 

III.  Emerson  seems  to  have  given  little  or  no 
attention  to  Lincoln  till  the  latter  was  nominated 
for  the  Presidency  in  1860,  and  then  he  was  dis 
trustful  and  somewhat  contemptuous  of  the  un 
gainly  Western  sucker  for  having  beaten  cultured 
Eastern  Seward  in  the  Republican  Convention,  the 
man  of  the  Higher  Law  and  of  the  Irrepressible 
Conflict.  Really,  therefore,  Lincoln  had  triumphed 
over  the  Emersonian  attitude  in  the  present  crisis. 


354      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

For  Lincoln,  though  he  morally  'condemned  and 
hated  slavery,  was  still  an  intensely  national  man, 
and  stood  at  his  deepest  and  best  for  the  Union, 
about  which  Emerson  at  this  time  had  grown  very 
shaky.  Lincoln  did  not  let  his  moralism  under 
mine  his  nationalism,  as  did  John  Brown,  in  whose 
boat  Emerson  has  now  taken  passage.  "While 
Brown  was  preparing  his  first  raid  into  Virginia, 
Lincoln  was  having  his  epochal  debate  with  Doug 
las  on  the  Illinois  prairies,  proposing  to  limit  the 
growth  of  slavery,  and  thereby,  as  he  says  opening 
the  way  to  its  ultimate  peaceful  extinction,  which 
he  then  believed,  would  slowly  come  to  pass. 

Accordingly  Lincoln  is  already  to  be  seen  as  the 
reconciler  of  the  chief  conflict  of  the  time,  the  con 
flict  between  the  Moral  and  Institutional,  as  far  as 
it  could  be  then  reconciled.  He  has  moralized  the 
issue  with  slavery  in  contrast  with  Douglas  who 
said  he  did  not  care  whether  it  were  voted  up  or- 
down  in  Kansas.  On  the  other  hand  he  has  insti 
tutionalized  this  same  issue  in  contrast  with  Sew- 
ard  of  the  Higher  Law,  besides  whom  we  have  here 
to  place  Emerson,  who  may  now  be  deemed  at  his 
anti-national  apogee  in  his  idolatry  of  John  Brown. 
We  can  thus  see  why  Lincoln  is  the  chosen  leader 
of  the  future,  who  is  destined  in  his  career  to  save 
both  morality  and  nationality  from  their  furious, 
mutually  destroying  dualism,  and  reconcile  them 
in  new  unity  which  is  just  the  restored  Union  with 
its  purified  Constitution.  Such  was  the  great  prob 
lem  not  only  in  the  Nation,  but  in  the  World 's  His- 


THE  PRACTICAL  DECENNIUM.  355 

tory  which  he  successfully  solved,  and  hence  he  has 
become  a  supreme  exemplar  not  only  to  his  own  but 
to  all  peoples. 

And  now  we  are  to  premise  that  Emerson,  having 
touched  the  extreme  point  of  his  estrangement  will 
begin,  through  the  discipline  of  the  time,  to  turn 
back  toward  the  Nation.  To  use  his  own  words  in 
another  connection,  his  eentrifugence  having 
reached  its  last  limit,  begins  to  pass  over  into  his 
centripetence.  We  may  well  hold  that  Lincoln 
through  his  leadership  performed  a  great  act  of 
spiritual  liberation  for  Emerson.  Though  the  lat 
ter  may  have  deemed  himself  adequately  emanci 
pated,  he  really  needed  a  new  emancipation  in  his 
present  condition  as  well  as  the  slave,  even  if  he 
were  the  white  man  and  New  Englander.  Well, 
who  did  not  then  need  to  be  enfranchised"?  The 
whole  North,  we  believe,  as  well  as  the  South, 
though  in  a  different  way.  But  it  is  curiously  in 
structive;  the  Proclamation  of  Emancipation  ap 
pears  to  have  struck  the  limits  from  Emerson  as  it 
did  the  fetters  from  the  slave.  For  that  act  seems 
to  have  been  just  the  luminous  node  at  which  he 
wheeled  about  from  his  anti-national  to  his  pro- 
national  faith.  In  one  sense  Emerson  may  say  that 
his  work  is  done,  his  long  protest  has  borne  fruit  in 
the  correction  of  a  great  institutional  wrong.  But 
in  a  deeper  sense  he  has  discovered  his  own  spir 
itual  obstruction,  yea  his  own  wrong,  and  begins  to 
transcend  it  to  a  new  order. 

IV.     Hence  this  Epoch    witnesses    the    greatest 


356      KALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

transition  of  Emerson 's  life,  we  might  name  it  also 
his  transitional  Decennium,  since  it  shows  him 
moving  to  his  farthest  extreme  of  social  negation, 
and  then  bending  around  in  his  return  sunwards. 
But  it  also  concludes  his  creative  energy,  which 
was  primarily  inspired  by  his  denial  of  established 
authority  as  transmitted  from  the  aforetime.  Spir 
itually  he  deemed  himself  an  Antinomian,  if  not 
practically;  non-conformity  made  him  dance  witli 
delight,  while  all  forms  of  association  soured  his 
stomach.  So  we  have  often  noted  him  hitherto  in 
the  course  of  this  biography.  But  now  behold  his 
grand  orbital  circumgyration ! 

Moreover  the  present  Epoch  was  one  of  conflict 
ever  increasing  till  it  came  to  the  point  of  down 
right  battle ;  and  it  lasted  inwardly  in  the  man  and 
outwardly  in  the  Nation  for  ten  years  (not  four), 
beginning  with  first  hostile  invasion  of  Kansas 
(1855)  and  continuing  till  the  surrender  at  Appo- 
mattox  (1865).  From  this  point  of  view  it  may  be 
called  Emerson's  warring  Decennium,  since  in  his 
way  he  was  enlisted  in  the  long  fight.  The  Ameri 
can  Ten  Years'  "War  it  was,  and  also  the  Emer 
sonian,  with  final  victory  for  both  the  man  and  the 
Nation.  In  this  mighty  movement  Emerson  sweeps 
and  is  swept  along  with  the  multitude,  and  thereby 
•becomes  unified  and  reconciled  with  the  people, 
from  whom  he  had  always  stood  aloof  with  a  kind 
of  distrust  and  even  disgust,  Thus  he  gets  truly 
democratized  for  the  first  time,  and  his  political 
note  undergoes  a  corresponding  change. 


THE  PRACTICAL  DECENNIUM.  357 

Another  result  is  that  he  turns  his  approving 
look  away  from  England  and  Europe  back  to  Amer 
ica.  Hence  he  is  now  a  different  man  from  the  one 
who  wrote  English  Traits  and  Representative  Men ; 
at  least  he  is  in  a  different  stage  of  his  career,  hav 
ing  reacted  from  his  Re-actionary  Epoch  to  his 
native  land  and  its  institutions,  in  regard  to  which 
he  had  previously  shown  such  a  deep  alienation. 
He  can  give  a  smart  rap  to  his  friend  Carlyle  (Cor 
respondence  1864)  for  the  latter 's  hostility  to  Amer 
ican  freedom.  "Ten  days'  residence  in  this  coun 
try  would  have  made  you  the  organ  of  the  sanity 
of  England  and  Europe  to  us  and  to  them,  and  have 
shown  you  the  necessities  and  aspirations  which 
struggle  up  in  our  Free  States."  This  indicates 
Emerson's  new  attitude,  but  it  also  implies  his  mis 
conception  of  England  and  Europe  as  well  as  of 
Carlyle.  The  truth  is,  the  European  consciousness 
was  very  diverse  from  the  American,  indeed  quit>. 
the  opposite  politically;  it  would  not  arid  perhaps 
could  not  understand  the  real  moving  principle  of 
our  Civil  War.  We  see  today  that  there  was  re 
quired  another  great  war  to  teach  England  and 
Europe  the  deeper  meaning  of  that  national  strug 
gle  of  ours  and  of  its  victory.  They  have  come  to 
know  that  we  in  our  Civil  War  were  fighting  for 
them  and  for  their  future  quite  as  much  as  for  our 
selves.  If  the  Union  had  been  dissolved,  we  would 
probably  have  had  our  own  wars,  and  certainly  our 
own  national  jealousies,  which  would  have  given  us 
enough  to  do  at  home,  with  little  ability  or  inclina- 


358      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON — PART  SECOND. 

tioii  to  send  help  abroad.  In  fact  we  would  have 
dropped  back  into  Europe's  separative,  ever-clash 
ing  State-system  (the  so-called  European  Poly- 
archy),  instead  of  advancing  to  the  self -harmoniz 
ing  American  Federation. 

Already  in  the  preceding  Epoch  Emerson  found 
during  his  trip  to  Europe  that  Carlyle,  however 
stimulating,  could  no  longer  be  his  spiritual  father, 
such  as  he  met  in  the  early  visit  of  1833.  Both 
were  disappointed  with  each  other  and  mutually 
critical.  Says  Carlyle  of  Emerson:  "I  think  his 
talent  is  not  quite  so  high  as  I  anticipated/'  for  it 
has  evidently  gone  its  own  way,  different  from  Car- 
lyleism.  Emerson  says  of  Carlyle:  "How  much 
more  he  might  do  than  he  ever  has  done — so  you 
think  when  you  see  him."  A  reciprocal  indiffer 
ence  took  place  then,  which  now  has  been  intensi 
fied  to  reciprocal  opposition.  The  crude,  immedi 
ate,  tyrannic  power  of  the  strongest  blow  has  be 
come  Carlyle 's  gospel  of  the  Great  Man,  from 
which  Emerson  revolts.  He  will  not  write  any  more 
representative  lives  during  this  Epoch;  he  seems 
rather  disgusted  with  Biography,  which  was  the 
favorite  subject  of  his  previous  Re-actionary  De- 
cennium,  influenced  not  a  little  by  Carlyle 's  Heroes 
and  Hero  Worship  and  Cromwell.  On  the  contrary 
he  is  inclined  to  return  to  the  Transcendental  time 
of  his  Essays;  to  his  supremely  creative  era.  The 
only  important  book  which  he  prints  during  the 
present  Epoch  (1855-1865)  is  his  Conduct  of  Life 
which  is  no  connected  organic  work,  but  a  collec- 


THE  PRACTICAL  DECENNIUM.  359 

tion  of  separate  Essays,  nine  in  number,  each  with 
its  own  abstract  title  as  in  his  first  series  of  Essays. 
And  for  the  matter  he  recurs  largely  to  the  inser 
tions  in  his  earlier  Diary.  We  note  that  a  thread 
of  his  present  activity  both  in  writing  and  lectur 
ing  turns  back  to  his  first  Epoch  of  the  present 
Period.  This  thread  or  strand  runs  quite  opposite 
to  what  we  have  emphasized  as  the  practical  or 
national  tendency  of  this  Decennium — the  latter 
sweeping  forward  to  the  new  goal  of  his  life,  the 
former  turning  backward  and  reiterating  with 
fresh  force  and  illustration  his  earlier  achievement. 
Accordingly  we  are  to  see  first  in  this  Epoch  two 
streams  of  Emersonian  activity,  in  a  kind  of  coun 
ter  movement,  sometimes  intermingling  yet  mostly 
separate,  which  we  may  name  after  him  the  two 
Emersons,  the  regressive  and  the  progressive,  or  the 
returning  and  the  advancing  currents  of  the  man 's 
existence.  Of  course  the  latter  is  the  distinctive 
work  of  this  time,  and  to  it  the  main  stress  must  be 
given.  Still  both  are  to  be  noted  as  organic  parts 
of  this  Practical  Epoch,  rounding  out  the  whole  of 
it  to  one  complete  cycle  of  the  author's  Life-Essay. 
Each  part  we  shall  sum  up  in  a  brief  statement, 
adding,  however,  a  third  resultant  complementary 
portion  which  gives  the  final  outcome  and  fulfil 
ment  of  Emerson  in  his  reconciliation  with  the  in 
stitutions  of  his  country.  Which  three  phases  we 
shall  entitle  Emerson  the  Regressive  (1),  the  Pro 
gressive  (2),  the  Institutional  (3). 


360     RALPH  WALKO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

I. 

THE  REGRESSIVE  EMERSON 

"We  are  not  to  forget,  then,  that  the  mighty  over-  - 
flow  of  the  new  Emerson  into  his  National  interest, 
did  not  supplant,  though  it  subordinated,  his  old 
Transcendental  interest.  This  he  still  kept  alive  by 
a  continuous  propagandism,  even  during  the  dis 
tracting  times  of  the  anti-slavery  agitation  in  which 
he  also  took  part.  We  even  hear  of  lectures  on 
"The  Natural  Method  of  Mental  Philosophy"  in 
1858,  and  similar  ones  in  the  later  years  of  this 
Epoch  (See  Cabot's  Memoir,  p.  763-791).  Thus  it 
is  manifest  that  Emerson  amid  all  his  political  ex 
citements  and  activities  never  dropped  his  plan  of 
writing  a  Prima  Philosophia,  which  was  to  be  his 
great  organic  system  of  thought. 

He  journeyed  far  and  wide  giving  lectures  which 
scattered  the  Emersonian  spirit  and  doctrine  in 
many  a  mental  seedfield  where  they  have  not  failed 
to  sprout  and  to  bear  fruit.  He  remained  the  chief 
and  for  a  time  almost  the  only  Professor  in  the 
traveling  Emersonian  University,  which  to  our 
mind  is  a  great  educational  prophecy  as  yet  unful 
filled.  So  Emerson  keeps  propagating  his  world- 
view,  and  what  is  better,  his  personality  through  his 
presence,  which  was  to  many  more  convincing  than 
his  words. 

His  purely  literary  creativity  during  the  pres 
ent  Epoch  fell  off  more  than  ever,  if  wo  measure  it 
by  the  shrinkage  in  his  Journals,  Letters,  and 


THE  REGRESSIVE  EMERSON.  361 

Books.  Still  he  was  not  idle ;  as  already  indicated, 
his  activity  turned  outward,  his  speeches  for  occa 
sions  increased  both  in  number  and  in  warmth,  and 
expressly  in  inner  'Coherence.  One  literary  book 
only  he  printed  during  these  ten  years,  and  it  has 
altogether  more  of  the  past  Emerson  in  it  than  of 
the  present  Emerson,  more  of  the  regressive  than  of 
the  progressive  man.  This  is  the  book  above  desig 
nated,  The  Conduct  of  Life,'  which  strikes  the 
reader  as  something  of  a  reminiscence,  in  spite  of 
its  new  points  and  illustrations.  Carlyle  gives  it 
the  highest  praise, i  ( reckoning  it  the  best  of  all  your 
books."  Certainly  not  the  most  original;  we  hear 
in  it  the  echo  of  the  Essays  both  as  to  form  and 
matter. 

The  Regressive  Emerson,  therefore,  turns  back  to 
his  previous  creative  Self  and  keeps  it  alive  by  the 
written  and  spoken  word.  He  rightly  felt  it  to  be 
the  best  and  most  lasting  part  of  his  achievement, 
and  so  Time  has  decreed.  But  mark  the  difference : 
the  former  anti-traditional  Emerson  has  become  a 
tradition,  yea  a  tradition  to  himself.  His  old  doc 
trine  shouted :  No  prescription,  no  adoption  of  the 
old,  away  with  the  past ;  but  now  the  ageing  Em 
erson  has  lived  to  be  his  own  past,  to  which  he  re 
gresses  and  which  he  repeats,  re-inforces,  and  re- 
propagates.  But  this  phase  is  not  his  only  or  his 
best  Self ;  he  also  sweeps  forward  in  a  distinctively 
new  path,  or  better,  in  a  new  arc  of  his  total  orbit 
of  life. 


362     RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 
II. 

THE  PROGRESSIVE  EMERSON 

Such  he  is  essentially  during  the  present  Decen- 
nium,  progressive,  moving  with  the  largest  and  even 
startling  stride,  performing  the  world-encompass 
ing  somersault  from  hostility  against  all  instituted 
order  to  reconciliation  with  the  same  as  the  last 
spiritual  fruition  of  a  long  life.  This  change  was 
wrought  in  him  lay  a  great  national  experience 
which  also  became  personal.  The  Emersonian  Civil 
War  runs  parallel  to  the  National  Civil  War,  and 
has  quite  the  same  outcome  at  about  the  same  time. 

The  progressive  Emerson  we  have  already  seen 
moving  in  his  national  experience  from  emphatic 
hostility  to  the  Nation  through  an  intermediate 
time  of  inner  and  outer  discipline  doubtless  some 
what  penitential,  to  his  final  reconcilement  with 
and  loyalty  to  the  Nation.  In  his  Diary  and 
Speeches  and  also  in  his  Poems  there  are  many 
flashes  of  a  spiritual  change  taking  place  within 
him  as  regards  the  political  and  indeed  the  whole 
institutional  order.  One  of  the  salient  examples  is 
the  following  citation :  "We  can  see  that  the  Con 
stitution  and  Law  in  the  United  States  must  be 
written  on  ethical  principles  so  that  the  entire 
power  of  the  spiritual  world  can  be  enlisted  to  hold 
the  loyalty  of  the  citizens/'  This  passage,  written 
in  Emerson's  Journal  toward  the  end  of  1863,  im 
plies  that  the  moral  conviction  of  the  time  must  be 
embodied  in  Law  and  Constitution  if  the  American 


THE  PROGRESSIVE  EMERSON.  353 

State  is  to  be  upheld  and  perpetuated  by  its  citi 
zens.  Here  lies  also  a  great  node  in  the  evolution 
of  Emerson  brought  about  by  the  movement  of  the 
Nation.  Already  the  necessity  of  an  amendment  to 
the  Constitution  abolishing  slavery  had  been  de 
clared  by  Lincoln  after  his  decree  of  Emancipation, 
which  must  become  a  part  of  the  organic  Law  of 
the  land,  ere  the  old  feud  between  Conscience  and 
the  Constitution  can  be  pacified.  The  Moral  taken 
by  itself  is  not  only  insufficient  but  self-undoing 
till  it  is  institutionalized.  Emerson  now  sees  and 
hints  the  method  of  freeing  himself  from  his  life 
long  dualism,  that  between  the  Moral  and  the  In 
stitutional  which  has  so  tormented  him  in  the  past, 
but  jilst  thereby  has  been  the  mainspring  of  his  lit 
erary  utterance.  Still  he  will  occasionally  lapse, 
and  again  we  shall  find  him  asserting  the  absolut 
ism  of  the  moral  or  subjective  viewpoint. 

Already  in  the  first  year  of  the  Civil  War  (Au 
gust,  1861)  he  declares:  "The  "War  goes  on  edu 
cating  us  to  see  the  bankruptcy  of  all  narrow 
views,"  which  we  may  well  take  as  a  personal  con 
fession.  Then  the  following  sentence  also  describes 
himself :  ' l  War  for  the  Union  is  broader  than  any 
State  policy,  so  that  we  are  forced  still  to  grope 
deeper  for  something  catholic  and  universal,  whole 
some  for  all. ' '  Is  he  not  questioning  his  former 
narrowness?  What  an  overhauling  of  the  past !  So 
he  imagines :  ' '  The  war  is  a  new  glass  to  see  all  our 
old  things  through,  how  they  look. ' '  Verily  our  en 
tire  life  is  being  thrown  into  this  melting-pot  of 


364     RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

battle  to  be  poured  afresh.  Listen  to  the  new  note 
of  reconciliation:  "We  will  not  again  disparage 
America,  now  that  we  have  seen  what  men  it  will 
bear."  A  repentant  touch  also  may  be  felt  in  this 
confession,  for  has  not  Emerson  often  slighted  and 
even  abused  his  -country  and  its  people  with  its  in 
stitutions?  Surely  he  is  getting  over  his  furious 
anti-nationalism,  and  even  his  scholarly  indiffer 
ence. 

That  is  certainly  the  progressive  Emerson.  Still 
he  is  not  yet  fully  evolved.  He  has  become  indeed 
a  strong  Unionist,  but  the  Union  is  not  first  with 
him,  not  the  end  but  the  means.  The  abolition  of 
slavery  has  the  primacy  to  his  mind.  So  he  at  the 
start  gets  very  impatient  with  Lincoln,  whom  he 
has  yet  to  understand,  crying  out:  "Happily  we 
are  under  better  guidance  than  that  of  statesmen. 
We  are  drifting  in  currents,  and  the  currents  know 
the  way."  But  Lincoln  is  just  the  statesman  who 
communes  with  this  supernal  guidance,  and  gets 
to  know  its  way — a  fact  which  Emerson  has  yet  to 
find  out  and  to  acknowledge.  Hence  he  can  still 
flame  up:  "See  to  it,  not  that  the  Republic  re 
ceives  no  detriment,  but  that  liberty  receives  no  det 
riment."  But  without  the  Republic  how  can  lib 
erty  (or  emancipation)  be  won  and  then  secured  ? 
Union  exists  for  Emancipation,  says  Emerson; 
Emancipation  exists  for  Union,  says  Lincoln,  espe 
cially  in  his  famous  letter  to  Greeley,  one  of  the 
most  telling  victories  of  the  War,  though  political 
and  not  military.  But  Emerson  keeps  snarling  his 


THE  PROGRESSIVE  EMERSON.  365 

disapproval  at  the  delay  of  Emancipation.     (See 
his  Journals  for  1861-2,  in  numerous  passages.) 

So  we  construe,  in  general,  our  progressive  Emer 
son  in  the  early  years  of  the  war,  deviously  advanc 
ing,  but  not  yet  arrived.  Still  after  the  Proclama 
tion  of  Emancipation,  which  went  into  effect  Janu 
ary  1,  1863,  we  note  a  forward  movement  with  some 
fluctuations.  Toward  the  close  of  this  year  (1863) 
he  is  looking  back:  "Fremont  was  superseded  in 
1861  for  what  his  superseders  are  achieving  in 
1862,"  when  the  time  is  ripe.  And  Napoleon  is 
cited  as  an  example,  saying :  "  If  I  had  attempted 
in  1806  what  I  had  performed  in  1807,  I  had  been 
lost."  Lincoln's  name  is  not  mentioned,  but  the 
example  can  only  mean  him  as  if  he  were  declaring : 
"If  1  had  done  in  1861  what  I  did  in  1862,  not  only 
I  but  the  country  would  have  been  lost."  Thus 
Emerson  begins  to  comprehend  Lincoln's  delay  of 
which  he  himself  had  so  often  complained.  And  he 
is  not  far  from  reproaching  himself  when  he  ex 
claims:  "Not  an  abolitionist,  not  an  idealist,  can 
say  without  effrontery,  I  did  it. "  To  be  sure,  Em 
erson  affirms  that  "this  Revolution  is  the  work  of 
no  man,  but  an  effervescence  of  Nature,  a  surprise 
to  the  leaders,"  something  elemental,  truly  a  Su 
pernal  Energy.  Still  that  Energy  required  some 
man  to  know  it  and  to  fetch  it  down  to  the  people 
and  to  the  occasion,  and  that  man  was  Lincoln, 
whom  Emerson  did  not  yet  fully  recognize  as  the 
time's  supreme  mediator  between  that  Supernal 
Energy  and  the  formable  but  as  yet  protoplasmic 
People.- 


366     RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

Such  are  the  ups  and  downs  of  the  soul  recording 
itself  in  Emerson's  Diary  during  this  testful  time. 
Perhaps  the  most  distinctive  statement  about  him 
self  in  relation  to  Lincoln  is  contained  in  his  Ad 
dress  on  the  Emancipation  Proclamation,  Septem 
ber,  1862  :  ''We  begin  to  think  that  we  have  under 
estimated  ' '  him  in  his  work  hitherto  as  "an  instru 
ment"  which  "the  Divine  Providence"  has  em 
ployed.  Let  us  "forget  all  that  we  thought  his 
shortcomings,  every  mistake,  every  delay."  A 
mellowed  Emerson  is  this,  expressing  his  own  peni 
tence.  Moreover  Lincoln  "had  the  courage  to  seize 
the  moment,"  the  right  psychologic  moment,  as  it 
is  now  called,  "and  such  was  the  felicity  attending 
the  action  that  he  has  replaced  Government  in  the 
good  graces  of  mankind" — that  is,  specially  in  the 
good  graces  of  the  once  anarchic  Waldo  Emerson. 
A  pivotal  confession — Emerson  converted  by  Lin 
coln  to  Government,  to  a  faith  in  the  Nation,  or  at 
least  to  the  beginning  of  such  a  faith.  Then  he  pro 
ceeds  to  a  kind  of  defense  of  the  institution  of  the 
State.  Very  gentle  and  somewhat  veiled  is  the  con 
fession,  for  Emerson  cannot  help  feeling  that  he  is 
here  unsaying  the  drift  of  his  whole  past  life — or 
at  least  moving  out  of  it  to  a  great  new  conception 
of  the  Social  Order.  Here  then  we  may  stress  the 
axial  point  at  which  Emerson  turns  away  from  his 
anti-institutional  attitude  to  the  beginning  of  his 
pro-institutional  creed,  yet  not  without  some  ques 
tionings  and  relapses. 


THE  INSTITUTIONAL  EMERSON.  357 

III. 

THE  INSTITUTIONAL  EMERSON 

With  such  new  title,  representing  the  great  spir 
itual  change  of  his  life,  we  may  at  this  point  crown 
Emerson,  who  has  now  gone  through  the  school  of 
the  Civil  "War  under  Lincoln  as  head  master  and 
chief  expositor  both  in  word  and  work.  We  may 
say  that  Emerson  has  here  arrived  at  a  kind  of  com 
mencement-day,  when  he  receives  a  living  diploma 
for  a  vast  task  done,  which  is  nothing  less  than  a 
long  and  busy  Period  of  his  entire  career  completed 
and  indeed  transcended.  The  time  of  such  gradu 
ation  may  be  set  down  in  a  general  way  at  the  close 
of  the  War  and  therewith  of  Lincoln  himself, 
through  whose  sudden  tragic  e vanishment  Emer 
son  felt  uplifted  to  an  insight  which  we  would  not 
be  far  from  wrong  in  calling  the  sovereign  of  all 
his  prophetic  intuitions. 

Some  two  years  and  a  half  after  the  last-men 
tioned  address  on  Emancipation,  Emerson  makes 
another  speech  about  Lincoln  who  had  just  been 
assassinated  (April,  1865).  Thus  to  the  speaker 
a  good  stretch  of  time  had  been  given  for  a  new 
growth.  And  certainly  he  is  now  looking  from  his 
highest  height.  He  calls  Lincoln  "the  true  history 
of  the  American  people  of  his  time, ' '  their  very  em 
bodiment;  "step  by  step  he  walked  before  them, 
slow  with  their  slowness,  quickening  his  march  by 
theirs,  the  true  representative  of  this  Continent." 
Verily  the  Occidental  Great  Man  was  he,  "the  pulse 


368      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON- PART  SECOND. 

of  twenty  millions  throbbing  in  his  heart,  the 
thought  of  their  minds  articulated  by  his  tongue. ' ' 
Thus  Emerson  sees  that  Lincoln  speaks  to  the  Folk- 
Soul  as  none  other,  and  voices  its  unworded  aspira 
tion.  But  what  is  tne  supreme  thing  which  he  im 
parts  and  whence?  Hereupon  Emerson  has  his 
word:  "There  is  a  serene  Providence  which  rules 
the  fate  of  Nations,  makes  little  account  of  time,  no 
account  of  disasters,  conquers  alike  by  what  is 
called  defeat  or  by  what  is  called  victory ' ' — in  this 
way  Emerson  seeks  to  construe  the  "serene  Provi 
dence,  ?  r  which  is  the  Supernal  Power  over  History, 
often  called  in  this  book  the  World- Spirit ;  he  names 
it  passingly  here  the  Eternal  Nemesis.  How  does  it 
function?  "It  creates  the  man  for  the  time,  trains 
him  in  poverty,  inspires  his  genius,  and  arms  him 
for  his  task."  It  has  called  forth  and  educated 
Lincoln,  who  is  therefore  its  human  vicegerent,  who 
connects  this  upper  Sovereignty  with  the  People. 
Such  is  indeed  the  supremely  Great  Man — Emerson, 
the  seer,  being  at  his  greatest  in  seeing  him. 

It  is  true  that  Emerson  does  not  distinctly  inter 
connect  these  three  supreme  elements  of  Universal 
History — his  "serene  Providence,"  his  "Man  for 
the  time,"  and  his  "twenty  millions  of  People." 
They  are  all  three  stated,  but  they  lie  quite  discon 
nected  in  his  statement,  at  least  not  psychically  in 
terrelated.  This  is  indeed  still  the  dominantly  sen 
tential,  discursive  Emerson,  who  does  not  yet  fully 
see  and  realize  the  Great  Man,  as  the  incarnate  Me 
diator  between  the  World-Spirit  and  the  Folk-Soul, 


THE  INSTITUTIONAL  EMERSON.  369 

such  as  Lincoln  was  both  in  word  and  deed.  Still 
we  are  not  to  forget  that  glimpses  of  all  three  are 
given  in  this  uplifting,  far  glancing  Address.  Nor 
can  we  help  thinking  that  Emerson,  if  he  had  it  to 
do  over  again,  would  write  a  very  different  book  on 
Representative  Men  after  this  tuition  of  Lincoln's 
career.  Surely  he  has  come  to  a  new  insight  into 
the  function  of  the  Great  Man.  But  his  productive 
time  is  past,  he  is  no  longer  able  to  re-construct  his 
world. 

This  last  thought  calls  up  the  fact  that  Emerson 
himself  during  the  present  Decennium  seems  to  have 
become  aware  that  his  creative  power  was  on  the 
decline.  In  this  speech  he  pensively  exclaims  while 
contemplating  Lincoln 's  early  death :  ' '  Far  better 
this  fate  than  to  have  lived  to  be  wished  away — to 
have  watched  the  decay  of  his  own  faculties."  A 
personal  feeling  seems  to  trickle  out  here,  Emerson 
being  now  sixty-two.  Covert  allusions  to  his  ad 
vancing  eclipse  we  find  in  his  Diary,,  for  example 
this  (1863)  :  "Let  not  the  old  thinker  flatter  him 
self.  You  may  have  your  hour  at  thirty  (says 
Jove),  and  lay  for  a  moment  your  hand  on  the 
helm,  but  not  at  sixty."  Emerson  was  sixty  when 
he  wrote  this,  and  evidently  was  looking  backward 
at  his  thirties  when  he  started  his  revolution  known 
as  Transcendentalism,  and  wrote  then  his  most  orig 
inal  productions.  So  he  recurs  retrospectively  to 
his  Creative  Decennium  which,  he  is  aware,  has  gone 
from  him  forever ;  he  feels  that  he  is  passing  into 
old-age  out  of  his  Middle  or  Second  Period.  Still 


370     RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

Emerson  knows  that  there  are  some  old  men  who 
never  lost  their  elemental  energy,  or  relax  their  na 
tive  grip  on  life  till  Death  in  person  seems  com 
pelled  to  step  in  and  cut  them  down  still  on  the 
battle-line.  Emerson  finds  an  example  of  this  sort 
in  John  Quincy  Adams  who  can  "lay  an  iron  hand 
on  the  helm  at  seventy-five"  (Journal  IX,  p.  573). 
Other  faculties  survive  and  can  still  work  in  Emer 
son,  but  genius  has  departed.  We  have  to  think 
that  if  Emerson  could  have  adequately  set  forth 
this  last  supreme  experience  of  himself  and  his  time 
in  a  book,  it  would  have  been  his  greatest,  having 
the  greatest  theme.  Still  he  lived  it  if  he  did  not 
write  it,  hence  it  is  not  lost,  but  remains  a  shining 
part  of  what  is,  in  our  opinion,  his  best  work — his 
life. 

Thus  Emerson  closes  probably  the  most  wrench 
ing  Epoch  of  all  his  years,  which  we  designate  his 
Practical  Decennium,  in  which  he  has  as  it  were  to 
reverse  the  whole  trend  of  his  previous  career,  hav 
ing  to  make  a  sharp  turn  from  his  more  theoretical 
and  contemplative  habit  of  mind  long  ingrained,  to 
an  active  participation  in  public  affairs,  especially 
in  the  politcal  sphere,  from  whch  he  has  heretofore 
largely  held  aloof.  This  is  truly  his  militant  Epoch, 
showing  quite  a  speck  of  actual  belligerency  in  the 
hitherto  pacific  Emerson.  Undoubtedly  he  has 
waged  some  hot  word-battles  in  times  past ;  defiant 
he  has  shown  himself  and  revolutionary  in  theory, 
but  he  has  rather  shunned  the  consequent  deeds,  as 
has  been  repeatedly  noticed.  But  now  we  are  at 


THE  INSTITUTIONAL  EMERSON.  371 

last  to  behold  him  in  practice,  obeying  the  call  'of 
the  time  to  take  his  place  on  the  fighting  line  of  the 
Nation's  conflict.  As  we  reckon  the  Epoch,  it  may 
be  deemed  his  Ten  Years'  "War,  running  quite  par 
allel  to  the  soul-determining  national  struggle  from 
1855  to  1865,  a  fact  already  emphasized.  This  syn 
chronism  has,  we  believe, -its  deep  and  indeed  uni 
versal  significance,  indicating  how  the  great  historic 
event  of  the  time  mirrors  itself  and  unfolds  in  the 
great  soul  of  the  time,  and  disciplines  the  same  to 
its  highest  vision  and  fulfilment. 

But  now  we  would  beseech  our  order-seeking 
reader  to  recall  that  just  here  we  are  closing  not 
only  an  Epoch,  but  a  Period  also,  a  much  larger 
sweep,  in  fact  one  of  the  three  great  arcs  which  make 
the  round  of  Emerson's  life-work.  We  have  named 
it  his  Revolutionary  Period,  with  its  keenly  critical, 
we  may  say,  negative  attitude  toward  all  those 
forms  of  associated  Man  which  we  call  Institutions, 
and  which  have  persisted  from  the  human  starting- 
point  in  remaining  the  most  potent  and  enduring 
inheritance  of  the  ages.  Because  of  this  their  tra 
ditional  character,  Emerson,  the  fortressed  foe  of 
Tradition  during  the  present  Period,  put  them  dar 
ingly  to  the  question,  summoning  them  before  the 
tribunal  of  his  thought,  interrogating  their  truth, 
and  even  denying  their  validity  for  human  advance 
ment,  though  he  personally  might  have  to  accept 
them  under  present  conditions  of  living. 

"Such  is  the  pervasive  leading  theme  of  Emer 
son's  writing,  which,  as  a  unique  expression  in 


372      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  SECOND. 

human  dialect,  or  as  mere  literature,  has  proved 
itself  to  have  an  abiding  value.  But  surely  the 
main  thing  in  Emerson  is  not  his  literary  form,  but 
his  spiritual  content,  his  message,  which  grapples 
\vith  the  deepest  interest  of  humanity,  past,  pres 
ent,  and  future,  namely  its  Institutions,  or  Forms 
of  Association,  in  which  -it  is  more  and  more  exten 
sively  to  be  gathered  and  protected,  to  the  goal  of 
a  greater  freedom  of  thought  and  action.  If  we 
are  able  to  dive  down  to  the  solid  bottom  of  the 
time's  ocean  of  lather  and  blather  in  newspaper, 
magazine,  and  other  passing  record,  we  shall  find 
that  the  grand  aspiration  of  the  whole  race  is  at 
present  institutional,  seeking  new  and  better  ways 
of  association  in  Family,  State,  Economics,  Church, 
and  School.  The  earth-folk 's  push  is  now  to  be  asso 
ciated  universally,  with  a  far-off  glimpse  of  its  com 
ing  State  universal. 

It  is  to  the  lasting  credit  of  Emerson  that  he  has 
seized  this  theme  and  made  it  the  underlying  sub 
strate  of  his  profoundest  spiritual  activity.  This 
is  chiefly  what  has  eternized. him,  both  in  his  writ 
and  in  his  life.  The  Middle  Period  just  closing  has 
shown  him  battling  with  the  transmitted  social  or 
der,  deeply  estranged  from  his  own  institutional 
world,  almost  ready  at  times  to  take  flight  from  civ 
ilization,  as  evolved  and  handed  down  from  the  past. 
Purgatorial  we  may  call  such  a  discipline  of  life, 
really  preparatory  for  the  ascent  to  Paradise,  to 
use  a  medieval  Dantean  conception.  Or  we  may 
take  a  more  modern  turn  of  the  same  thought  f  amil- 


THE  INSTITUTIONAL  EMERSON.  1)73 

iar  to  the  readers  of  the  last  great  world-poem,  Goe 
the  's  Faust,  which,  also  hints  the  final  redemption 
of  its  ever-aspiring  hero : 

"Wer  immer  strebend  sich  bemiiht, 
Den  konnen  wir  erlosen. 

So  the  present  Period  may  be  said  to  show  the 
striving  Emerson  who  therein  represents  the  mighty 
spiritual  wrestle  not  merely  of  himself  but  of  his 
people  and  of  his  age,  till  his  final  deliverance  and 
redemption  by  that  Upper  Power,  which  rules  in 
the  movement  of  History,  and  which  Emerson  the 
thinker  has  at  least  once  christened  as  the  World- 
Spirit,  glimpsing  it  now  as  a  redeemer. 

And  the  poet  Emerson  in  his  later  verse  has  re 
peatedly  touched  upon  this  last  and  deepest  trans 
formation  of  himself,  imaging  it  to  be  a  return  and 
renascence  like  that  of  Nature 's  Spring-tide,  a  kind 
rejuvenescence  in  feeling  and  consciousness  if  not 
in  creative  intellect.  The  poem  called  May-Bay 
(published  1867)  is  full  of  such  exultant  even  if 
veiled  suggestions,  of  which  we  may  here  catch  up 
one  which  hints  the  return  of  the  exiled  Adam  to 
his  Eden  after  long  separation  and  estrangement: 

And  so  perchance  in  Adam's  race, 

Of  Eden's  bower  some  dream-like  trace 

Survived  the  Flight  and  swam  the  Flood 

And  wakes  the  wish  in  youngest  blood 

To  tread  the  forfeit  Paradise 

And  feed  once  more  the  exile's  eyes. 


The  Reconciled  Emerson 

1865-1882 

Such  is  the  cheer-bringing  title  with  which  we 
may  now  laurel  Emerson  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  As 
already  indicated,  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  can 
well  be  taken  as  the  node  of  his  great  new  transi 
tion  from  his  middle  to  his  third  and  final  Period. 
Or  more  definitely,  we  may  consider  his  address  on 
the  Assassination  of  Lincoln  as  a  kind  of  milestone 
at  which  he  shows  himself  rounding  out  his  former 
stage  and  pushing  forward  into  a  new  phase  of  his 
total  career.  Of  course  the  change  was  somewhat 

374 


THE  RECONCILED  EMERSON.  375 

gradual,  and  moved  along  upon  the  supreme  na 
tional  experience  of  the  time,  with  which  Emerson 
had  the  gift  to  identify  himself  in  his  own  personal 
evolution. 

Very  delightful  to  us  and  soul-uplifting  is  the 
thought  that  Emerson  passed  over  into  his  old-age 
reconciled  with  his  country  and  its  institutions,  and 
more  deeply  with  History  and  the  World's  Order. 
Thus  his  life  in  its  whole  circuit  becomes  an  object 
of  healing  contemplation.  In  fact  just  this  transi 
tion  is  one  of  Emerson's  great  works,  if  not  his 
greatest,  even  if  it  be  recorded  only  in  his  living 
and  not  in  his  writing.  Again  we  have  to  think 
that  his  life  in  its  completeness  is  better  than  his 
books,  though  these  are  by  no  means  to  be  neglected, 
being  necessary  constituents  of  his  total  biography. 
Emerson's  example,  so  worthy  on  many  sides,  seems 
to  us  at  its  loftiest  in  the  present  deed. 

So  we  are  now  to  leave  behind  us  the  unreconciled 
Emerson,  with  his  long  protest  against  the  existent 
constitution  of  things, .  especially  against  the  social 
order  or  the  realm  of  associated  Man.  To  voice 
this  protest  has  been  indeed  his  main  creative  task, 
as  we  have  often  noted.  Many  fine  and  many  wise 
things  he  has  flung  us  by  the  way,  with  gleams  of 
many  spiritual  provinces;  still  the  main  line 
through  all  his -variety,  we  may  again  reiterate,,  is 
his  critique  of  Institutions,  which,  however,  is  now 
brought  to  a  close.  His  career  hitherto  we  have 
likened  to  a  long  purgatorial  discipline  for  the  es 
tranged  soul  which  finally  reaches  its  haven  of 


376      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON — PART  THIRD. 

peace  and  reconciliation.  As  an  American  Purga 
tory  for  the  denier  of  Institutions,  I  see  no  reason 
why  it  should  not  have  a  lasting  place  in  literature, 
as  well  as  Dante's. 

I.  The  present  Period  is,  accordingly,  a  great 
stride  forward;  but  we  are  also  to  see  that  it  is  an 
even  greater  sweep  backward,  as  it  were,  to  Emer 
son's  very  starting-point.  We  are,  accordingly,  to 
behold  him  here  returning  upon  himself  from  the 
beginning;  for  this  reconciliation  with  the  institu 
tional  order  is  a  reconciliation  with  the  prime  con- 
ditons  of  his  existence,  with  the  very  postulates  of 
human  being.  He  was  born  into  the  Family,  State, 
Society,  even  Church,  which  are  thus  the  pre-sup- 
positions  of  his  life  as  a  rational  or  civilized  man. 
It  has  already  been  narrated  how  this  established 
world  of  Institutions  took  him  up  quite  as  an  in 
fant,  reared  him,  educated  him  and  gave  him  a  vo 
cation. 

But  it  lay  deep  in  Emerson's  individuality  as 
well  as  in  his  time  and  place,  as  he  grew  up,  to  ques 
tion  these  transmitted  forms  of  the  social  order, 
even  to  deny  them,  and  to  rebel  against  them,  theo 
retically  at  least.  This  he  did  in  the  name  of  free 
dom  :  he  had  no  hand  in  making  them,  why  should 
they  make  him  ?  Such  was  his  deepest  note  of  dis 
content  ;  and  in  his  supreme  defiance  he  challenged 
the  very  genesis  of  his  social  being,  demanding  what 
right  have  you  to  determine  me  even  to  be  ? 

So  we  have  followed  the  long  career  of  the  pro 
testing,  unreconciled  Emerson,  from  his  first  explo- 


THE  RECONCILED  EMERSON.  377 

sive  breach  with  his  traditional  calling  to  his  ex 
treme  negation,  when  he  is  met  by  the  new  regener 
ating  experience  of  the  Civil  War.  The  point  which 
we  would  now  emphasize  is  that  Emerson  in  this 
last  phase  moves  forward  into  what  may  be  called 
his  Return,  and  interlinks  with  the  first  stage  of  his 
nascent  self  as  the  creature  of  the  established  order, 
and  so  justifies  its  existence  in  his  own.  Thus  we 
behold  his  life's  cycle  rounded  full  and  completed, 
and  the  man  made  harmonious  out  of  his  original 
discord  of  being  born,  especially  born  into  a  tradi 
tional  world  of  institutions. 

As  we  conceive  it,  this  final  Return  is  what  makes 
Emerson's  life  in  its  basic  movement  concordant 
with  itself,  and  most  worthy  of  study  and  spiritual 
appropriation.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  his  books, 
his  achievement  of  a  completely  rounded  existence 
is  his  final  crown,  and  that  is  the  right  goal  of  all 
living  for  the  individual  man.  Not  only  reconciled 
in  himself,  but  reconciled  in  his  nearly  four  score 
years  of  living — that  is  for  us  the  Reconciled  Emer 
son  at  his  deepest  and  best. 

II.  Emerson  has  himself  indicated  this  change 
from  his  Second  to  his  Third  Period  in  a  number  of 
passages,  showing  that  he  was  well  aware  of  it. 
Perhaps  it  is  most  directly  expressed  in  his  poem 
called  Terminus  which  he  read  to  his  son  (as  the 
latter  reports)  in  1866,  and  which  is  a  confession 
of  his  vanished  creative  power;  he  must  now  "econ 
omize  the  failing  river,"  and  also  "mature  the  un- 
fallen  fruit."  And  just  that  is  what  Emerson  did: 


378      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  THIRD. 

he  went  back  to  his  old  stores  and  put  them  in  or 
der,  "fault  of  novel  germs."  Here  he  recognizes 
himself  as  the  regressive  Emerson,  in  the  matter  of 
writing.  The  poem  was  probably  written  about 
1865-6,  and  helps  us  date  the  present  Period,  the 
first  line  striking  its  key-note :  ' '  it  is  time  to  be  old, 
to  take  in  sail. "  So  he  hears  the  decree  of  Termi 
nus  :  i '  the  God  of  bounds  came  to  me  and  said,  No 
more."  Invention  is  gone,  and  " fancy  departs." 
So  we  may  see  the  old  Emerson  looking  at  himself 
and  versifying  his  look. 

Moreover  there  is  in  the  same  poem  a  peculiar 
acknowledgment,  or  rather  a  kind  of  lament  on  the 
part  of  Emerson  that  his  powers  have  gone  into  de 
cline  too  early  in  life,  for  which  he  seems  to  blame 
with  some  vehemence  his  ancestors : 

Curse,  if  thou  wilt,  thy  sires 
Who  when  they  gave  thee  breath 
Failed  to  bequeath 
The  needful  sinew  starlr  at  once, 
But  left  a  legacy  of  ebbing  veins. 

III.  This  melancholy  retrospect  of  waning  senes 
cence  let  us  counter  with  the  opposite  mood  of  joy 
ous  rejuvenescence  which  also  sings  from  the  ageing 
poet,  especially  in  his  May  Day,  showing  sharp  con 
trast  with  the  preceding  Terminus.  The  two  pieces 
mirror  to  us  Emerson  first  gazing  gloomily  into  the 
sunset  of  a  past  life  and  then  scintillating  in  the 
sunrise  of  a  new  creative  hope  called  up  by  the  ver- 
iial  glories  before  his  eyes. 


THE  RECONCILED  EMERSON.  379 

The  exuberant  and  for  curt  Emerson  somewhat 
lengthy  downpour  of  verse  called  May  Day  was 
published  as  a  whole  in  1867,  though  it  is  a  collec 
tion  of  poetic  ecstasies  on  Spring's  appearance 
reaching  back  through  many  years  of  the  author's 
life.  His  son  and  editor,  in  the  last  edition  of  his 
Works,  says  that  some  lines  of  this  poem  are  found 
in  the  Journals  of  1845.  In  fact  there  are  intima 
tions  in  it  which  are  traceable  much  earlier,  for  in 
stance  those  on  evolution.  Thus  it  may  be  regarded 
as  a  string  of  beautiful  pearls  taken  probably  from 
all  three  of  Emerson's  Periods.  It  is  an  anthology 
of  rapturous  outbursts  on  the  return  of  Spring 
seemingly  during  a  poet's  life- time  splashing  up 
more  or  less  separately,  being  not  welded  together 
into  anything  like  unity.  Still  we  hear  the  one  key 
note  sounding  through  it : 

The  world  rolls  round — mistrust  it  not — 
Befalls  again  what  once  befell; 
All  things  return,  both  sphere  and  mote, 
And  I  shall  hear  my  bluebird's  note. 

As  we  construe  the  poem,  the  last  page  has  spe 
cial  reference  to  this  Third  Period  of  Emerson,  who 
now  addresses  Spring  with  a  kind  of  personal  ap 
peal  for  renewal : 

For  thou,  0  Spring,  canst  renovate 
All  that  high  God  did  first  create. 
Be  still  his  arm  and  architect, 
Ik-build  the  ruin,  mend  the  defect. 


380      RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  THIRD. 

Such  is  the  affecting  prayer  of  the  old  and  deca 
dent  Emerson  to  the  creative  season   of    Nature's 
renascence,  as  he  recalls  the    productive     energy 
which  Spring  once  "brought  him  in  younger  days : 
Not  less  renew  the  heart  and  brain, 
Scatter  the  sloth,  wash  out  the  stain, 
Make  the  aged  eye  sun-clear, 
To  parting  soul  bring  grandeur  near. 
Emerson  was  sixty-four  years  of  age  when  this 
poem  appeared  in  print.     It  has  many  hints  of 
life's  renewal  symbolized  in  the  Spring;  even  the 
renewed  Nation  after  the  Civil  War  seems  to  be  al 
luded  to.    But  Emerson  feels  most  deeply  Spring's 
reproach  to  him  personally : 

Who  can  like  thee  our  rags  upbraid 
Or  taunt  us  with  our  hope  decayed  ? 
IV.  What  may  we  set  down  as  the  first  and  most 
suggestive  instance  of  the  Reconciled  Emerson  1  As 
We  interpret  his  words  and  actions,  he  would  prob 
ably  be  most  gratified  over  his  reconciliation  with 
Boston  which  had  been  during  his  creative  years 
the  chief  fortress  of  his  adversary.  Undoubtedly  he 
had  always  had  friends  and  a  following  in  that  com 
munity  ;  but  the  spirit  of  Boston,  he  had  hardly  won 
till  this  last  Period.  In  his  middle  time  he  repeat 
edly  denounces  the  great  city  of  the  Puritans  as  un 
worthy  of  its  ancestors,  and  he  declares  that  his 
verse  ''shuns  to  name  the  noble  sires  because  of  un 
worthy  sons."  He  can  bitterly  stigmatize  its  peo 
ple: 


THE  RECONCILED  EMERSON.  3flf 

Your  town  is  full  of  gentle  names, 
By  patriots  once  were  watchwords  made ; 
Those  war-cry  names  are  muffled  shames 
On  recreant  sons  mislaid. 

Still  Emerson  was  a  Bostonian,  born,  reared,  and 
educated  in  Boston.  Underneath  all  his  reproaches, 
all  his  hate,  there  was  a  still  deeper  love.  He  re 
minds  us  of  the  banished  Dante  whose  dearest  Flor 
ence  is  the  object  the  poet's  furious  curses  shot 
through  with  caresses.  So  Emerson  calls  the  Bos- 
tonians  slaves  wearing  freedom's  names,  really  de 
generates  of  the  old  Puritanic  stock.  The  ancient 
courage  has  disappeared  in  modern  formalism,  and 
he  scoffs  at  "thy  bane,  respectability" — which  mis 
take  our  Emerson  will  not  commit  though  a  Bos 
tonian.  Still  we  shall  find  that  he  too  has  a  formal 
side  of  life,  by  no  means  eschewing  respectability. 

What  is  the  ground  of  this  falling-out  with  his 
city,  we  may  say,  with  his  world?  The  reader  of 
the  foregoing  narrative  has  already  the  essential 
facts.  It  was  the  conservative  rock-ribbed  Boston 
spirit  shown  in  his  first  conflict  with  his  church, 
which  threw  the  young  minister  out  of  his  ancestral 
vocation.  "We  may  trace  the  after-throes  of  this 
early  battle  through  his  whole  middle  Period.  And 
the  soul  of  Boston  did  not  take  kindly  to  Transcen 
dentalism.  We  have  already  considered  how-  Har 
vard  College,  the  spiritual  center  of  the  community, 
requited  the  audacities  of  Emerson's  Divinity  Class 
Address.  The  fact  is  that  Emerson  was  banished 
from  Boston,  not  politically,  as  Dante  was  from 


382     RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  THIRD. 

Florence,  but  spiritually.  And  just  that  drew  his 
battle-line.  The  whole  middle  Period,  as  already 
set  forth,  was  first  of  all  a  struggle  between  Emer 
son  and  Boston. 

So  it  came  about  that  he  would  not  go  back  to  his 
native  city  for  his  permanent  residence  when  he  set 
tled  down  to  his  life 's  task.  Still  he  did  not  locate 
too  far  away  from  his  antagonist,  but  built  his  Cas 
tle  of  Defiance  at  Concord  whence  he  launched  his 
ever-renewed  Declaration  of  Independence,  and 
flung  down  his  gage  of  battle.  So  he  put  himself  in 
line  with  the  famous  bellicose  deed  of  the  little 
town,  in  whose  glory  his  forefathers  had  part.  Con 
cord  was,  therefore,  his  ancestral  seat,  to  which  he 
returned  in  spite  of  the  advantage  of  having  been 
born  in  Boston.  Traditional  'Concord  became  the 
home  and  life-long  fortress  of  the  anti-traditional 
Emerson  in  his  attack  upon  the  traditions  of  Bos 
ton  in  Church,  State,  Society. 

But  now  unto  the  world-reconciled  Emerson 
reconciliation  has  also  come  with  his  native  city. 
And  Harvard  has  invited  her  most  distinguished 
son  after  long  estrangement  to  deliver  the  harmo 
nious  counterpart  to  his  much  decried  and  decrying 
Divinity  Class  Address  of  epoch-creating  memory. 
And  now  we  may  hear  the  once  anti-traditional  Em 
erson,  often  repeating  Boston's  Motto,  well  pre 
served  in  antique  crystallized  Latin:  Sicut  patri- 
bus,  sit  Deus  nobis!  May  that  ancient  Puritanic 
God  of  the  fathers  be  ours  still :  such  is  his  fervent 
new  prayer  of  reconciliation.  Finally  in  one  of  his 


THE  RECONCILED  EMERSON.  333 

latest  poems  celebrating  past  fames  of  liis  city,  the 
usually  placid  seer  suddenly  overflows  into  a  seeth 
ing  gush  of  benediction,  and  you  may  almost  hear 
him  give  a  red-hot  kiss  to  his  darling  Boston : 

A  blessing  through  the  ages  thus 
Shield  all  thy  roofs  and  towers ! 
God  with  the  Fathers,  so  with  us, 
Thou  darling  town  of  ours ! 

V.  Some  seventeen  years  may  be  assigned  to 
this  last  Period — a  long,  beautiful  sunset,  slowly 
waning  indeed  yet  shining  to  the  close.  He  kept  up 
his  literary  activity,  though  with  mental  grip  con 
tinually  relaxing,  till  finally  he  could  no  longer  ar 
range  his  own  papers  but  had  to  call  in  for  help  an 
editor.  Several  works  of  his  appeared  during  this 
time ;  here  we  need  mention  only  his  Natural  His 
tory  of  the  Intellect  as  the  sad  expiring  effort  of  his 
ambition  to  organize  into  writ  his  youthful  Philo- 
sophia  Prima — a  pathetic  failure.  Thus  his  powers 
gradually  ebbed  away  to  the  close,  involving  not 
only  his  productivity,  but  also  his  memory  and  to  a 
certain  extent  his  speech. 

Still  he  had  his  reward.  Honors  flowed  in  upon 
him  from  many  quarters,  even  from  foreign  lands, 
during  this  last  Period.  As  he  had  become  recon 
ciled  with  the  world,  so  the  world  had  in  its  turn 
become  reconciled  with  him,  and  gave  him  at  last 
his  due  recognition.  Two  long  journeys  of  grace 
he  took — one  to  the  far  East,  the  other  to  the  far 
West,  to  the  Pyramids  and  to  California,  but  they 


384     TtALPH  WALDO  EMERSON— PART  THIRD. 

left  no  record  like  those  earlier  trips  to  the  old 
home.  Still  they  were  triumphal  in  their  way. 

Early  one  morning  in  July,  1872,  his  house  took 
fire  and  Emerson  was  for  the  first  time  put  to  flight 
from  his  Castle  of  Defiance  in  his  old-age.  Friends 
and  neighbors  rebuilt  it  for  him  while  he  went 
abroad;  when  he  returned  he  was  welcomed  with 
procession,  band  of  music,  arch  of  triumph,  and 
speeches — an  affecting  tribute  to  Emerson  the  con 
queror,  having  won  a  supreme  victory  in  Life 's  long 
desperate  battle,  whereof  the  record  is  this  Biog 
raphy. 

At  home  in  his  resurrected  mansion,  still  the 
outer  abode  but  therewith  the  strangely  foreshow 
ing  symbol  of  his  spirit's  last  transition,  he  passed 
away  on  the  27th  day  of  April,  1882 — and  yet  lives, 
even  with  a  more  fully  consummated  existence  than 
ever,  for  he  now  rises  before  us  in  his  entire  man 
hood  and  fulfilment,  over  time  as  it  were,  and  no 
longer  eddying  fitfully  in  the  strown  succession  of 
his  years  and  their  scattered  labors.  Now  he  lives 
for  us  his  whole  life  in  its  wholeness,  and  therein 
has  won  his  immortal  portion. 


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